She ran in, one day, at her nurse’s, in tears,—in a passion of mingled anger and woe. She had been watching, this fortnight, for the symptoms of an intention to cut the grass at the rectory. She had looked through the garden paling, every day, and had seen the grass growing longer and longer on the lawn, till the wind waved it as if it had been ripening corn. Papa had promised for a whole year, that she should make his haycock; and Susan had given her a hay-rake, just tall enough for her, on her last birth-day. Mrs. Byrne herself had told her on Tuesday, that the grass was to be cut this day, if the weather should be fine. Alice had jumped out of bed an hour before Susan called her, to see how bright the sun was shining; and now, after all, Mr. Mackintosh would not admit her to make hay because she was the vicar’s daughter. “My dear, that cannot be the reason. There has been no time yet for Mr. Mackintosh to quarrel with your papa. I dare say he does not like to have little girls running about his grass plat; though I see no great harm that you could do him and his grass.” “But he said himself that it was because I was the vicar’s daughter; and that he would have nobody belonging to a clergyman go near him.” “Well, that does agree with his saying that he would not let the Quarry Farm to any religious people; superstitious people, as he calls them.” “I don’t think I am very religious. He might as well let me go in and make hay,” murmured Alice, relapsing into tears. “Come and look at my bees,” said Mrs. Byrne. “You should see how they have got on with the comb since you were here. Since we laid out the bed for the thyme——Take care, my dear; you will upset the milk. There! there goes your hat into it! Dear! dear! how came you not to see the milk pail?” While she plunged the straw bonnet in water, to get rid of the milk in which it had already been dipped, Alice asked how the milk pail happened to stand there, full in the sun, where the milk would be sure to turn sour before night. How could she help stumbling over it? And she was about to remove it into a better place; but Mrs. Byrne stopped her. Byrne would be angry if it was moved. She had promised that it should stand in that place and nowhere else. If Alice’s bonnet should be quite spoiled, Byrne and Mr. Peterson must settle it between them which should buy her another, for Mrs. Byrne could not take upon herself to say which was answerable for the milk standing there. It did seem a sin and a shame that the milk should be turning sour there, when the neighbours she usually supplied were doing without. “Then why do not you let them have it?”