“’Twur about four o’clock, I believe, and all the things was put back again after mucksing out the rooms, when missus said to me, ‘You run, Polly, and pick a little bit of chive down the walk there. I don’t want much,’ she says, ‘but what there is must be good, and just enough to cover a penny-piece, after I’ve chopped it up and put it together. I wants to have everything ready,’ she says, ‘just to make a homily when my husband comes home. I have got plenty of parsley in that cup,’ she says, ‘but he always likes a little bit of chive, to give it seasoning. And be sure you pick it clean,’ she says, ‘and it musn’t be yellow at the tip, or dirty, because if the grit gets in,’ she says, ‘it’s ever so much worse than having none at all.’ So I says, ‘All right, ma’am, I knows where it is; and you shall have the best bit out of all the row.’ ‘You’re a good girl,’ she says, ‘don’t be longer than you can help, and you shall have a cup of tea, Polly, before you go home, because you’ve worked very well to-day; nobody could ’a doed it better,’ says she. Well, I took a little punnet as was hanging in the kitchen, not to make it hot in my hands, you see, and I went along the grass by the gooseberry bushes,—you knows the place I mean, mother; and there was the chives, all as green as little leeks. As I was a-stooping over them, with my back up to the sky, all of a sudden I heer’d a sort of creak like, as made me stand up and look to know where it come from. And then I seed the old door, as used to be bolted always, opening just a little way, in towards me, though I was a good bit off; and then the brim of a hat come through, and I sings out, ‘Who’s there, please?’ There wasn’t no nose or eyes a-coming through the door yet; nor yet any legs, so far as I could see; but only that there brim, like the brim of a soft hat; and I couldn’t say for certain whether it were brown or black. ‘Nothing here to steal,’ I says, for I thought it wor some tramp; and then the door shut softly, and I was half a mind to go and see, whether there was any one out in the lane. But it all began to look so lonely like, and I was ordered not to stop, and so I thought the best thing was to go back, and tell the missus. But something came that drove it out of my mind altogether. For when I got back to the house she says, ‘Don’t you lose a minute, Polly, that’s a good girl. Run as far as Widow Cutthumb’s, and fetch half a dozen eggs. I thought I had four, and I have only got three,’ she says, ‘and I can’t make a homily for two people of three eggs. And my husband won’t eat a bit, unless I has some,’ she says.