"Tell her my husband will come to see her as soon as he can." The good woman departed well pleased, and it was not long before the woman she called Dame Anne, made her appearance. I saw at once that she was a lady, and made haste to set her an easy chair. She put on no airs, however, but seeing on what we were engaged, she went at once to work and showed that she knew what she was about. "The lady sews like a Dutch woman!" said Mary Thornton. "Nevertheless I have never been out of England," answered Dame Anne, smiling, "but I was convent-bred, and there we learned to handle our needles at least." "Ay, and many another good thing beside," I answered. "I wonder sometimes what young ladies will do for education now the convents are put down?" "Perhaps their mothers will keep them at home and teach them, which is the natural way, methinks," answered Dame Anne. "An' I had a daughter, I would never put her into any hands but my own." I may as well say here, that we found Dame Anne one of our greatest helps in the parish. The woman who had kept a little school in the hamlet down by the shore—a very superior person by all accounts—had died about six months before, and the children were running wild. After making himself well acquainted with her, and having duly consulted with our lady of the manor, Dame Anne was installed by my husband in the office of school-mistress, and filled it to admiration as long as she lived. Well, the end of the month found us fairly settled in our new home, and very comfortable therein. When Sir David came home from Exeter—whither he had gone to meet us, though we had never told him we meant to go thither—he held his hands up in amazement at the change wrought in the parsonage. But he would by no means have his abode with us, saying that he should only be in our way, and that he was too old to change his habits, so he took up his lodging with an old couple who had more room than they wanted, and lived with them to the day of his death, which happened about three years after. He had a modest competence, which he bequeathed to the poor of the parish; and my husband, with Sir Richard's approbation, built and endowed therewith two more almshouses, specially for disabled fishermen, or their widows. But I am running before my story. If Sir David had been a bad housekeeper, he had not been an unfaithful priest, as the state of the parish showed plainly enough. The church had been stripped of its images, but not defaced and half ruined, as was the case with too many. The great painted window was quite untouched, the chancels decent and clean, and the seats whole. It was but a little place at best, and a good deal of space was taken up by two or three great altar tombs, but it was large enough to hold all the inhabitants of the two hamlets which made up the parish.