She entered the room where this image of neatness stood--poor, passionate Annie, with her dark eyes dull and tired, her pouting lips pale with sickness or weariness, and the straying hairs bright and rough beneath her hat. She was neat, indeed--Jenny’s child could not be otherwise--but not with the conscious neatness of the farmer’s daughter, and at that moment she looked tremulous and ill, unwilling to talk and only fit for rest. Without saying a word or holding out her hand, she sat down in the chair Alice silently offered; and almost unconsciously put out her hand, and took up a sock from the heap upon the bed. The action might have been called mechanical, but it raised her at once in the opinion of her companion. ‘Would you like to work?’ Alice asked, hospitably; ‘I’ve needles, cotton and thimble, everything; I can put the big basket between us on a chair, and then we can take from it what we want. Only don’t be troubled, as if you must be helping me, ’cause I’ve plenty of time to get through all to-day.’ ‘I ’ud like to work,’ Annie answered, not unreadily, as she took off her hat and laid it on the bed; ‘I’m always accustomed to sit an’ work at home, whenever there’s any spare time of any sort. It doesn’t seem natural to sit with idle hands, and I don’t like it ... it gives one time to think ...’ The deep sigh with which she broke off did not escape her companion, and Alice looked up anxiously. Annie did not resent the glance, she appeared to welcome it; at that moment she must have felt in need of sympathy. ‘Mother an’ me’s had words,’ she murmured, half-reluctantly, as if in answer to her companion’s eyes; her industrious fingers occupied all the while with the sock that she had taken in her hand. ‘Mother is so foolish, she will not understand that there’s some things about which one cannot talk; she wishes me to behave as if I was a child, an’ I know I shall never be a child again.’ The words had a pathetic sound, perhaps because of the pathos of the dark eyes she raised--a glance almost childish in its simplicity, and yet, at the same time, too suggestive of womanhood. At that moment it was not possible to look at her without some intuition of danger; and ‘farmer’s Alice,’ in spite of her precision, had enough clearness of sight to be forewarned. It may be that an anxiety lurking at her own heart made her more able than usual to feel for another woman’s trial; for, in spite of her resolves--and she could be resolute--she had been herself more or less troubled all the day. The sound of that trouble could be heard in her voice, an undertone beneath its quietness. ‘We can’t expect things to be always right,’ she said; ‘there’s worries upon t’ best o’ days--there’s the colt in the garden, or else there’s father ill, or t’ boys steal the fruit, an’ we can’t find who they be. Mr Bender, he says we all on us have trials; an’ I’m sure it’s true, so I suppose it must be so.’