"Hannah," I said--"Hannah, it is true, and he hasn't taken leave of his senses. He was united in marriage yesterday with Grace Donnithorne. Oh Hannah! Oh Hannah!" Perhaps I expected Hannah to show great surprise; but all she really did was to kneel down beside me, and open her arms wide, and say, "Come, then, honey! Come, then, honey!" and she clasped me in her bony arms and drew my head down to rest on her breast. Then I had relief in a burst of tears. I cried long. I cried as I had not cried since I could remember, for no one in the old house had time for tears; tears were not encouraged in that austere, neglected abode. After a time Hannah lifted me up, just as though I were a baby, and conveyed me into the parlour. There she laid me on two chairs, and put cushions under my head, and said, "I have got a drop of strong broth downstairs, and you shall have it." I enjoyed being coddled and petted by Hannah, and we both, by a sort of tacit consent, agreed not to allude for the present to the terribly painful topic which had at last intruded itself upon us. After I had taken the soup I felt better and was able to sit up. Then Hannah squatted down in front of the fire and looked into it. I observed that her own eyes were red; but all she did was to sway herself backwards and forwards and say, "Dearie me! Oh, my word! Dearie me!" At last the mournful sort of chant got upon my nerves. I jumped up with alacrity. "Hannah, the boys will be in soon. We must tell them, and we must get the place in order, and--" "Miss Dumps!" cried Hannah. She spoke in a loud, shrill voice. "If you think, Miss Dumps, even for a single minute, that I'm going to put up with it, you've mistook me, that's all." "But what are you going to do, Hannah? You won't leave us, will you?" "Leave you? Go out of the house into which I came when Master Alex was a baby, bless him! and when you were but a tiny, tiny tot! Leave the house? No, it ain't me as 'ull do that." "Then, Hannah, what will you do?" I went up to her and took one of her hands. She gave it unwillingly. "Dumps," she said. She was still huddled by the fire. I had never seen her so subdued or broken-down before, and it was only when I heard her voice rise in shrill passion that I recognised the old Hannah. "Dumps, is it you who is going to submit tame--you, who had a mother?" "Oh, I must submit," I said. I sank down again into a chair. "Where's the good?" I queried. "I always know you had no spirit worth speaking of," said Hannah. "I'm sorry now as I gave you that drop of soup. It was the stock in which I meant to boil the bits of mutton for the boys' dinner, but I said you should have it, for you were so took aback, poor child! But there! 'tain't in you, I expect, to feel things very deep; and yet you had a mother." "You said yesterday that she had been killed," I said, and my voice trembled.