"I loves maids, I du, I loves 'em proper. I loves children tu, innocent little children. I loves 'em all, 'cept when they scream, and then I can't abide 'em. I reckon, my dear, you wouldn't find a tenderer woman than me anywheres. I tells myself sometimes I be tu soft, but I can't help it, my dear." The old swine slobbered over the girl, half-drunk and half-acting, giving her loud-sounding kisses; and Thomasine did not know that most of the girls who had been placed under Mrs. Fuzzey's protection had been used in the same way as long as they would stand it. People have many peculiar ways of easing the conscience; some confess to a priest, some perform charitable works; others, like Mrs. Fuzzey, assume they are rather too good, though they may be vile. The old harridan posed as a tender-hearted being in love with every living creature; and she had read so many ridiculous love-tales and wept over them, and drunk so many bottles of sloe-gin and wept over them, and listened with lamentations to so many amatory details from the young women who had placed themselves under her charge, that she had pretty well persuaded herself she was a paragon of loving-kindness. Thomasine thought she was; but then Thomasine knew nothing. It was rare to see a human being cross the court in front of Ashland. If more than one person passed in a day it was a thing to talk about, and sometimes a whole week went by bringing nobody. The policeman who was supposed to patrol the district had possibly never heard of the place, and had he been told to go there would have wanted a guide. Ashland was more isolated at that time than most of the dead hamlets, because the two farm-houses that stood nearest were empty and dropping to pieces. About half-a-mile beyond the court another dark little lane branched off, and presently it divided into two dark little lanes like rivers of mud flowing between deep banks. They were like the dark corridors of a haunted house; and one of them led to the dead hamlet of Black Hound, now one cob farm-house until lately occupied by Farmer Hookaway who had shot himself the previous autumn; and the other finished up at the dead hamlet of Yeast-beer, which was also one cob farm-house with the thatch sliding off its roof, and this had been tenanted by Farmer Venhay, who had not shot himself but had drowned his bankrupt body in the Yeo. It was a pretty neighbourhood in summer, for the foxgloves were gorgeous, so were the ferns, and the meadow-sweet, irises, ragged-robins and orchids in the marshy fields; but it was sad somehow. It wanted populating. There were too many ruins about, too many abandoned orchards overrun with brambles, too many jagged walls of cob which represented a name upon the map. Once upon a time the folk of Merry England had danced and revelled there. Their few descendants took life tragically, and sometimes put it off in the same way. There was no music for them to dance to.