“Lard love ’ee, sir,” returned Martha, startled into familiarity, “farmer folks mid be busy enough, an’ lab’rin’ folks too--I can scarce find the day long enough to put in all as I’ve a-got to do--but mother! what can a poor wold body like mother have to work at, wi’out it’s a bit o’ knittin’, or some such thing. No, it’s summat else, an’ I’m sure I can’t think what it can be.” Mr. Joyce was not imaginative enough to assist her by any further hypothesis; therefore, he merely touched up the horse and remarked reassuringly that they would soon be there. And for the rest of the drive Martha devoted herself to the somewhat difficult task of keeping her three-year-old boy, Ally, from wriggling out of her arms. Dropped at the bottom of the “dip” wherein was situated Mrs. Kerley’s cottage, Martha hastened towards it, Ally trotting gleefully beside her. Instead of finding the cottage door open--as might have been expected this sunny October afternoon--and catching a glimpse of her mother’s quiet figure in its elbow-chair, she found the house shut up, and apparently no sign of life about the place. The very garden had a neglected look, or so it seemed to her; and the little window, usually gay with flowers, was blank and desolate, the check curtain within being drawn across it. “Mother!” cried Martha, in a tone of such anguish that Ally immediately set up a corresponding wail. “Oh mother, whatever is to do? Be you dead? Oh, mother! be you dead?” To her intense relief she heard the sound of a chair being pushed back over the flagged floor within, and her mother’s well-known step slowly cross the little kitchen. “Martha! be it you, my dear?” But she did not open the door, and when Martha eagerly tried the latch she found that it did not yield. “Mother, mother,” she cried in an agony of fear, “oh, mother, what is it? Why don’t ye let I in?” “I can’t, my dear,” came the tremulous voice from within. “No, don’t ax it of I. I dursen’t, Martha! There, I mid do ’ee a mischief.” “Mother, what be talkin’ on?” Martha was beginning incredulously, when her small son, impatient of the delay, fairly drowned her voice with shrill clamour for admittance, and vigorous kicking of his little hobnailed boots at the panels of the door. Martha snatched him up and impatiently clapped her hand over the protesting mouth. In the momentary pause that ensued she heard her mother weeping. “Be that Ally? Oh, my blessed lamb! Oh, dear heart! Oh, oh!” Then in a louder key came the words broken by sobs: “Take en away, Martha, do--take en away, lovey! Somethin’ bad might happen else!” Here Ally, wrenching himself free, burst into a roar of indignation, and his mother, popping him down on the ground, threw herself upon the door, and, exerting all her strength, succeeded in bursting it open. With a wail Ann shrank away from her into the farthest corner of the room, hiding her face against the wall.