'If ifs were beans and bacon, there's few'd go clemmed,' said Hazel. 'That green un's proper, like when the leaves come new, and little small roses and all.' Put it on while I see what Vessons is doing.' 'He's grumbling in the kitchen, seemingly,' said Hazel. Vessons always grumbled. His mood could be judged only by the _piano_ or _forte_ effects. Hazel heard him reply to Reddin. 'No. Supper binna ready; I've only just put 'im on.' He always spoke of all phases of his day's work in the masculine gender. Hazel stopped buttoning her dress to hear what Reddin was saying. 'Have you some hot water for the lady?' ('The lady! That's me!' she thought.) 'No, sir, I anna. Nor yet I anna got no myrrh, aloes, nor cassher. There's nought in my kitchen but a wold useless cat and an o'erdruv man of six-and-sixty, a pot of victuals not yet simmering, and a gentleman as ought to know better than to bring a girl to Undern and ruin her--a poor innocent little creature.' 'Me again,' said Hazel. She pondered on the remark and flushed. 'Maybe I'd best go,' she thought. Yet only vague instinct stirred her to this, and all her soul was set on staying. 'Never shall it be said'--Andrew's voice rose like a preacher's--'never shall it be said as a young female found no friend in Andrew Vessons; never shall it be said'--his voice soared over various annoyed exclamations of Reddin's--'as a female went from this 'all different from what she came.' 'Shut up, Vessons!' But Vessons was, as he would have phrased it himself, 'in full honey-flow,' and not to be silenced. 'Single she be, and single she'd ought to stay. This 'ere rubbitch of kissing and clipping!' 'But, Vessons, if there were no children gotten, the world'd be empty.' 'Let 'un be. 'Im above'll get a bit of rest, nights, from their sins.' 'Eh, I like that old chap,' thought Hazel. The wrangle continued. It was the deathless quarrel of the world and the monastery--natural man and the hermit. Finally Vessons concluded on a top note. 'Well, if you take this girl's good name off'n her--' Suddenly something happened in Hazel's brain. It was the realization of life in relation to self. It marks the end of childhood. She no more saw herself throned above life and fate, as a child does. She saw that she was a part of it all; she was mutable and mortal. She had seen life go on, had heard of funerals, courtings, confinements and weddings in their conventional order--or reversed--and she had remained, as it were, intact. She had starved and slaved and woven superstitions, loved Foxy, and tolerated her father. Girl friends had hinted of a wild revelry that went on somewhere-- everywhere--calling like a hidden merry-go-round to any who cared to hear. But she had not heard. They had let fall such sentences as 'He got the better of me,' 'I cried out, and he thought someone was coming, and he let me go.' Later, she heard, 'And I thought I'd ne'er get through it when baby came.'