“My dear,” said Mrs. Morris, “it’s Lucy Blyth’s magic. That girl’s an angel if ever there was one. If your fayther would only go to meeting nobody knows what might happen.” Here the good woman sighed at what appeared to her a vista of delight too good to hope for. Meanwhile Lucy Blyth and her boorish escort were making their way through the wintry night towards Nestleton Forge. Happily for Morris, with whom words were always few, and usually gruff, his companion rushed into conversation--not that she was that social nuisance, a wordy woman, but that she was a born politician, and meant to turn the golden moments to good account. “Mrs. Morris is much better and brighter to-night. Don’t you think so?” “Yes,” was the emphatic reply, “because she’s had you to cheer her up. She does get desperate worritsome at times, though.” “Why, you see, Mr. Morris, it is hard for her to be almost always a prisoner in her chair, and as for her sick headaches, I don’t know how she does to bear them.” “Yes, I daresay it’s hard enough,” was the brief reply. “Mary’s a great comfort to her,” said Lucy. “She is so quiet and gentle, and nurses her so tenderly. I often wonder how she manages to get through her work so well. I _do_ like Mary.” “Yes, Poll’s a good lass,” said Morris, laconically. “How kind and nice it is that those boys should come so often and so far to see their mother! I _was_ pleased to hear about Bob.” “What about Bob?” said Ursa Major. “Why, on Tuesday, after his day’s work, he walked all the way to Kesterton and bought his mother some oranges.” “Did he?” quoth Bruin. “Yes, he did, and Dick’s as kind and good as he is. I _do_ like those lads.” “It appears to me you like ’em all,” said Piggy Morris, and there was a little querulousness in his tone, as though he felt himself to be a natural exception. “You never said a truer word,” said Lucy, laughing, “and I’m afraid I shall keep coming to see you, till you turn me out.” Here Morris gave a chuckle, odd in its character, a cross between a grunt and a hiccup. “Then that’ll be for ever an’ ever, as long as there’s a threshwood to the door, or a tile on the roof.” “By the way, Mr. Morris, do you know that Squire Fuller has refused us a piece of land for a Methodist chapel? He says he won’t have such a thing in his village.” “_His_ village! The old fool, it isn’t all his. Midden Harbour belongs to old Crabtree. Squire Fuller’s a bad old”---- “Hush!” said Lucy, “don’t say anything naughty, for my sake.” Ursa Major growled and finished his sentence, more expressive than refined, in an unknown tongue. “But it does seem a pity that we can’t have a chapel, doesn’t it? Farmer Houston’s kitchen cannot hold all the people.” “Humph! What’s the squire care about that?” “No, more’s the pity, but our young minister, Mr. Mitchell, says that, seeing we can’t get all the people who come into one room, we must try to find another. He would like to get one in Midden Harbour.”