"Thank you, Johnny; but I'd rather carry it myself. It's my best silk one, and you might break it. I never dare trust my umbrellas to Tom: he drives them straight out against trees and posts, and snaps the sticks." She turned into Timberdale Court, and asked to see Mrs. Broom. Mrs. Broom appeared in the parlour with her sleeves turned up to the elbow, and her hands floury. She had been housekeeper during old Mr. Ashton's time. "Look here," said Mrs. Coney, dropping her voice a little: "I've come to ask a word or two about that woman--from the shed, you know. Who is she?--and what is she?" But the dropping of Mrs. Coney's voice was as nothing to the dropping of the housekeeper's face. The questions put her out uncommonly. "I wish to my very heart, ma'am, that the woman--she's but a poor young thing at best!--had chosen any part to fall ill in but this! It's like a Fate." "Like a what?" cried Mrs. Coney. "And so it is. A Fate for this house. 'Tis nothing less." "Why, what do you mean, Broom?" Mother Broom bent her head forward, and said a word or two in Mrs. Coney's ear. Louder, I suppose, than she thought for, if she had intended me not to hear. "Raves about Captain Bird!" repeated Mrs. Coney. "He is all her talk, ma'am--George Bird. And considering that George Bird, blackleg though he has turned out to be, married the young lady of this house, Miss Lucy Ashton, why, it goes against the grain for me to hear it." Mrs. Coney sat down in a sort of bewilderment, and gave me the silk umbrella. Folding her hands, she stared at Mother Broom. "It seems as though we were always hearing fresh news about that man, Broom; each time it is something worse than the last. If he took all the young women within his reach, and--and--cut their heads off, it would be only like him." "'George!' she moans out in her sleep. That is, in her dreaming, or her fever, or whatever it is. 'George, you ought not to have left me; you should have taken care of me.' And then, ma'am, she'll be quiet a bit, save for turning her head about; and begin again, 'Where's my baby? where's my baby?' Goodness knows 'twould be sad enough to hear her if it was anybody's name but Bird's." "There might be worse names than his, in the matter of giving us pain," spoke Mrs. Coney. "As to poor Lucy--it is only another cross in her sad life." "I've not told this to anybody," went on Mother Broom. "Jael Batty's three parts deaf, as the parish knows, and may not have caught Bird's name. It will vex my master frightfully for Miss Lucy's sake. The baby is to be buried to-day. Mr. Charles has stayed to do it." "Oh, indeed!" snapped Mrs. Coney, and got up, for the baby appeared to be a sore subject with her. "I suppose the girl was coming across the country in search of Bird?" Broom tossed her head. "Whether she was or not, it's an odd thing that this house should be the one to have to succour her."