They sat on the opposite side of the hearth. One a portly, middle-aged woman with a white apron much in evidence, and a little shawl crossed over her shoulders. The strings of her very flat straw bonnet were untied and thrown back, an infallible token of perturbation of mind in the class to which she belonged, her large fat hands tightly clasped together on the top of her apron, her woebegone face with its lack-lustre eyes and loosely-dropping lower lip, the very picture of helpless despondency. Close beside her, on the extreme edge of his chair, sat a young man sufficiently like her to be recognisable as her son, but with considerably more intelligence in his face—intelligence dashed at this moment by a marked expression of sullenness. “Well, Aunt Betty, if you can’t help us, I’m sure I can’t think whatever we be to do. You was always so clever—they do say down yonder in village there bain’t nothing as Betty Sibley haven’t got some way o’ gettin’ round. She can very nigh make the dead alive again.” “Nay now, I never went so far as that,” said old Betty, throwing herself back in her chair. “But I’ve brought back them as has gone to the New House just for a minute like to ax a question. Sometimes the end comes so suddent there bain’t no time for things to get settled as they should be settled, and as them as is gone ud’ wish to have them settled—well, then, there’s ways o’ makin’ them come back.” “Lor!” ejaculated Kate Hardy under her breath, looking in awe at her distinguished relative. “’Ees, my dear, you mid be sure o’ that. D’ye mind when poor Jane Arnold was took off wi’ an impression on her chest—not so much time as to say where she’d like to be buried? Well, ye know, her daughter Mary was terrible upset. She know’d her mother had a lovely set o’ silver spoons put away safe somewhere, what was to be hers as she did tell her many a time when she was livin’, but not so much as one o’ them could she find; and Tom, the brother—a very rough fellow was Tom—gived her a week to put all to rights in the house and to pack up and go. Him and his missus didn’t get on at all with Mary. So poor Mary did come to I, the tears a-streaming down her face. ‘Mrs. Sibley,’ says she, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without you’ll help me. I’ve lost my dear mother,’ she says, a-sobbin’ and a-cryin’ fit to break her heart, ‘and now it do really seem as if I was to lose the spoons too.” “Eh—h—h, dear, dear,” groaned Mrs. Hardy sympathetically. “’E—es, my dear, it ’ud ha’ melted a heart o’ stone I do assure ye. So, I gived her summat and I did tell her what to say—” Here the young man who had been sitting moodily twirling his thumbs, only changing his position once or twice to kick the burning logs with the heel of his hob-nailed boot when the flames sunk low, looked up suddenly with an expression of interest. “What did ’ee give her?” he asked.