“I suppose you are all very fond of Miss Sara, knowing her all her life,” Mrs. Preston said, after she had received very graciously Betty’s tribute to her own child. Though she warned Pamela against building on it, it would be hard to describe the fairy structures which had already sprung in her own mind on these slight foundations; and though she would not have breathed his name for worlds, it is possible that Pamela’s mother, in her visions, found a place for Mr. John too. “Fond! I don’t know as we’re so fond of her neither,” said Mrs. Swayne. “She’s well, and well enough, but I can’t say as she’s my sort. She’s too kind of familiar like--and it ain’t like a real county lady neither. But it’s Betty as sees her most. And awful good they are, I will say that for them, to every creature about the place.” “Ah, mum, they ain’t the real old gentry,” said Betty, with a touch of pathos. “If I was one as had come with ’em, or that--but I’m real old Dewsbury, me, and was at the Hall, coming and going, for twenty years afore their time. I ain’t got nothing to say again’ Miss Sara. She comed there, that’s all--she wasn’t _born_. It makes a difference when folks have been forty years and more about a place. To see them pass away as has the right,” said Betty growing sentimental, “and them come in as has only a bag o’ money!” “Little enough money the old Squire had,” said Mrs. Swayne, turning her head, “nor manners neither. Don’t you be ungrateful, Betty Caley. You was as poor as a church-mouse all along o’ your old Squires, and got as fat as fat when the new folks come and put you all comfortable. Deny it, if you can. I would worship the very ground Miss Sara sets foot on, if I was you.” “Ah, she ain’t the real old gentry,” said Betty, with a sigh. Perhaps Mrs. Preston had a weakness for real old gentry too, and she had a dull life, poor woman, and was glad of a little gossip. She had heard the story before, but she asked to hear it again, hoping for a little amusement; for a woman, however bowed down to the level of her fortune, gets tired sometimes, even of such a resource as needlework. She would not sit down, for she felt that might be considered lowering herself to their level. But she stood with her hand upon the back of an old high wooden chair, and asked questions. If they were not the real old gentry, and were such upstarts, why was it that the place was called by their name, and how did they come there?