After another short interval, however, the sound of her own name breathed in the most dolorous of tones caused her to turn her head once more. Daniel had thrown an arm round each half of the trunk, and was craning forth through the gap, his face vying in colour with the clusters of haws which surrounded it. “Phœbe!” he pleaded with a gusty sigh. “Well?” returned she, slowly wiping the suds from her stout red arms. “Phœbe, I’ve acted terr’ble bad to ye.” “E-es, you have,” replied Phœbe succinctly. “I d’ ’low I have,” he agreed dejectedly. “I be pure sorry, dalled if I bain’t.” Miss Cosser snorted. “I’ve a-repented, my dear, ever since. E-es, I have! Sure I have! Phœbe!” “Well?” “I’ve a-been thinkin’--would ye go to church wi’ me now?” “This minute?” queried Phœbe with alacrity; the muscles of her face relaxed, and she twitched down first one of her rolled-up sleeves and then the other. “E-es, this very minute; the Reverend ’ull tie us up right enough if I ax en.” “Gie me a clean apron!” cried Phœbe, turning quickly to Mary Ann and jerking at the string of the very damp garment which protected her dress. She already wore her hat, and by the time her cousin, who had vanished with a bound, reappeared shaking out the crisp folds of the clean white apron, she had unpinned her skirt. “Now, then,” she remarked after tying it on, and she fixed her best eye with a business-like air on her Daniel, who had been gazing at her with almost incredulous rapture. He left off embracing the hawthorn and reached the garden gate at the same moment as Phœbe herself; and before Mrs. Cosser, attracted by Mary Ann’s shrieks of enjoyment, had had time to reach the door they had set off arm-in-crook and disappeared round the angle of the lane. “A TERR’BLE VOOLISH LITTLE MAID.” The cottage next door to Mrs. Cross had long been occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Frizzel, but when that good couple went to live “Darchester-side” near their married daughter Susan, their discarded dwelling was taken by a respectable widow woman named Chaffey; and on a certain autumn morning she entered into possession. From under the green “shed” of his cart the carrier extracted a variety of goods and chattels, exciting keen interest in the mind of Mrs. Cross, who, with her nose flattened against the leaded panes of her bedroom window, watched the proceedings closely. The large articles of furniture had arrived on the previous day in a waggon--a wooden bedstead, so solid in construction and uncompromising in shape that its legs had hung over the edge; an oak settle and carved linen chest at which Mrs. Cross had turned up her nose, deeming them “terr’ble old-fayshioned”.