"Ephraim! Ephraim is not my brother. I could find it in my heart to wish he was. He is my cousin. At least they say so. But I don't know, it's all so dark to me. You see, I never knew either father or mother. Ever since I can remember 'twas only granddam and then Ephraim that they say's my cousin. But I don't know, I don't know. I don't feel it here," and she passed her hand to her heart. "Ah, 'tis a piteous thing never to have know a mother's love," and her voice broke, and the tears threatened to fall. "But they're kind to you, Miriam?" "Kind? Ah! Yes. They mean to be kind. They call me their Queen, and some of the older ones tell of days before they came to Burnplatts, when they had a Queen of their own, and they say I'm come to bring those days again. But oh! how I loathe it all the lying, the drinking, the stealing, the cursing. And the women! They're worse than the men. And they hate me and speak ill of me because I will not be as they are. Why, even Ephraim bids them leave me alone." "And why do you wish Ephraim were your brother?" "Because--because then," she faltered, and hung her head in shamed confusion, "oh! then he'd be fond of me--in another way. But you won't understand." Oh, didn't I though. "Well, never mind about Ephraim now," I said. "Tell me about yourself." We'd walked slowly on, side by side, away from Burnplatts, and had come to a small plantation of wind-battered trees that sheltered us from view, and we sat upon a granite boulder that bulged through the turf. "Tell me about yourself, Miriam--how do you pass your time, what do you do?" "Oh! I can find enough to do. I knit. I'm a famous knitter. Granddam taught me that, and she sells the things I knit at the farmhouses round; and I make mops and brooms--they say mine are the cleverest fingers in all Burnplatts; and then, when I can buy a book, I read." "Read!" I could not help exclaiming, for though it has been said that reading and writing come by Nature, well I knew that Nature's travails need a midwife if reading and writing are to be the issues. "Aye, those were happy days when I learned to read and write. I was only a wee child then, and old Daddy was alive and dwelt with us at Burnplatts." "Old Daddy! You're rich in relations‚" I broke in jealously. She laughed merrily. "Daddy was no relation. 'Tis but the name we all called him by. He used to live at Burnplatts, but he's been dead these many years. I don't know how he came to be there, a poor, harmless, shiftless, old man he was. They all made game of him, and he was at everyone's beck and nod. But they didn't grudge him meat and drink when they found he could learn me to read and write, and sums, too," she added triumphantly. "I've read the 'Pilgrim's Progress' twenty times, and twenty times to that, and when you tore me from that horrid man at the Wakes I likened you to Greatheart in the story." I believe I blushed. "I'd have fared badly but for Jim," I told her.