"It's a hardness you can t depend on. I've knowed William hear fast enough,--when he wasn't wanted. He'll be wantin' to know, too, why we can't put the bird out for ourselves: his deafness makes him suspicious. . . . And what's more," wound up Dinah, "it won't help us, one way or 'nother, whether he hears or not. We shall go about _thinkin_ he's heard; and I tell ye, mistress, I shan't be able to face that man again without a blush, not in my born life." "It's perfectly ridiculous, I tell you!" repeated Mrs Bosenna, starting to her feet. "Am I to be forced to breakfast in the kitchen because of a bird?" "Then, if so be as you're so proud as all that, why not go back to bed again, and I'll bring breakfast up to your room." "Nonsense. Where d'ye keep the beeswax? And run you up to the little store-cupboard and fetch me down a fingerful of cotton-wool for my ears. I'll do it myself, since you're such a coward." "'Tisn't that I'm a coward, mistress--" "You're worse," interrupted her mistress severely. "You never ought to know anything about such words, and it's a revelation to me wherever you managed to pick them up." Dinah smoothed her apron. "I can't think neither," she confessed, and added demurely, "It could never have been from the old master, for I'm sure he'd never have used such." Mrs Bosenna wheeled about, her face aflame. But before she could turn on Dinah to rend her, the sound of a horn floated up from the valley. Dinah's whole body stiffened at once. "The post!" she cried, and ran forth from the kitchen to meet it, without asking leave. Letters at Rilla Farm were rare exceedingly, for Mrs Bosenna made a point of paying ready-money (and exacting the last penny of discount) wherever it was possible; so that bills, even in the shape of invoices, were few. She had no relatives, or none whom she encouraged as correspondents, for, as the saying is, "she had married above her." For the same reason, perhaps, she had long since stopped the flow of sentimental letters from the girl-friends she had once possessed in Holsworthy, Devon. If Mrs Bosenna now and again found herself lonely at Rilla Farm in her widowhood, it is to be feared the majority of her old acquaintances would have agreed in asserting, with a touch of satisfied spite, that she had herself to blame,--and welcome! "There's _two!_" announced Dinah, bursting back into the kitchen and waving her capture. "_Two!_--and the Troy postmark on both of 'em!" "Put them down on the table, please. And kindly take a look at the oven. You needn't let the bread burn, even if I _am_ to take breakfast in the kitchen." "But ain't you in a hurry to open them, mistress?" asked Dinah, pretending to go, still hanging on her heel. "Maybe I am; maybe I ain't." Mrs Bosenna picked up the two envelopes with a carelessness which was slightly overdone. They were sealed, the pair of them. She broke the seal of the first carefully, drew out the letter, and read--