“No; if you’ll believe me, they fair dathered I wi’ axin’ questions, and wantin’ I to make promises and that. ‘Why didn’t I come and see the maid afore?’ says they, as if ’twas likely, Mrs. Cross, as I’d go trapesin’ off to a institootion to ax arter a maid as was too small to be any good to anybody. Then they did want I to give her wages. Wages to a little bit of a thing as knowed nothin’, and couldn’t do nothin’! ‘No,’ I says, ‘I’ll give her a home,’ I says, ‘and I’ll be a mother to her, and train her same as if she was my own child, but more than that I will _not_ do.’” “O’ course not,” agreed Mrs. Cross; “lucky enough she was to get sich a good offer, _I_ think.” “And so you may,” agreed the other solemnly, “and so I did often say to the maid herself. ‘You may think yourself lucky,’ I did say to her often and often; ‘many another,’ I did tell her, ‘’ud put you out on the road when you do behave so voolish. But me! look at the patience I’ve had wi’ you!’ ’Twas a terr’ble voolish maid, Mrs. Cross--she was a bit silly in herself to begin with, and they institootions--Lard, they do never seem to teach a maid a thing as ’ull be a bit o’ use to ’em! She could scrub a stone passage a mile long if she was put to it, but there bain’t no passages in cottages, and she couldn’t so much as peel a potato or wash a cabbage. Well, I did take so much pains wi’ her as a mother could ha’ done--I did make her find out for herself how to hold a knife, no matter how much she did cut herself. ‘Find out,’ I did say; and she _did_ find out. And when grubs come up on the dish wi’ the cabbages, I’d cut off the bits as was nearest to ’em and put ’em on her plate; so she did soon learn, ye see. Sleep! that maid ’ud sleep many an’ many a cold morning arter I’d pulled blankets off her--e-es, there she’d lay so fast as anything, and never take a bit o’ notice till I got a drap o’ cold water--an that didn’t always wake her up all to once. There, she was fair aggravatin’!--when I did get her up at last and get back to bed again, I couldn’t get a wink o’ sleep for thinkin’ on’t.” “Dear, to be sure! Well now!” commented Mrs. Cross, scratching her elbows appreciatively. “E-es, indeed,” continued Mrs. Chaffey, warming with her theme. “I did tell her many a time, ‘You’ll come to no good’. Ah, that I did, and she didn’t come to no good neither.” “Didn’t she though?” queried the other with interest. “Took up with a soldier, very like?” “Nothin’ o’ the kind. There weren’t no soldiers anywheres near us. ’Twas another kind of a man altogether.” “A-h-h,” groaned Mrs. Cross sympathetically. “And I s’pose he wouldn’t marry her, mum?” “E-es, he married her, Mrs. Cross,” responded the widow in a tone of dignified surprise. “E-es, he married her. Indeed he did.” “But there was carryin’s on, I s’pose?” suggested Mrs. Cross respectfully. Mrs. Chaffey fixed her with a stony stare.