"Not it, the little toad, but 'twas saving he as ricked her back somehow, and made her a cripple for life, as you see, ma'am; and she was six months in the hospital, till the doctor, he say as how he couldn't do nothing more for her, so Hewlett and me we took her in, as she is my own sister, you see, and we couldn't let her go to the workhouse, but she do want a little broth or a few extrys now and then, ma'am, more than we poor folks can give her." "My mistress is very good, and gives me a little pension," put in the invalid, while her sister looked daggers at her, and Mrs Carbonel, in obedience to her husband's signal, took a hasty leave. "There now! That's the way of you, Judith," cried Molly Hewlett, banging the door behind them. "What should you go for to tell the ladies of that pitiful pay of yours but to spile all chance of their helping us, nasty, mean skin-flints as they be!" "I couldn't go for to deceive them," humbly replied Judith, meek, but cowering under the coming storm. "Who asked you to deceive? Only to hold your tongue for your own good, and mine and my poor children's, that you just live upon. As if your trumpery pay was worth your board and all the trouble I has with you night and day, but you must come in and hinder these new folk from coming down liberal with your Methody ways and your pride! That's it, your pride, ma'am. Oh, I'm an unhappy woman, between you and Dan! I am!" Molly sank into a chair, put her apron over her face and cried, rocking herself to and fro, while Judith, with tears in her eyes, tried gentle consolations all in vain, till Molly remembered her washing, and rose up, moaning and lamenting. Meantime Mrs Carbonel and her sister were exclaiming in pity that this was a dear good girl, though Edmund shook his head over her surroundings. "I wonder how to make her more comfortable," said Dora. "She seemed so much pleased when I promised to bring her something to read." "I am afraid those Hewletts prey on her," said Mary. "And patronising her will prove a complicated affair!" said the captain. He wanted them to come home at once, but on the way they met Nanny Barton, who began, with low curtsies, a lamentable story about her girls having no clothes, and she would certainly have extracted a shilling from Miss Carbonel if the captain had not been there. "Never accept stories told on the spur of the moment," he said. Then Betsy Seddon and Tirzah Todd came along together, bending under heavy loads of broken branches for their fires. Tirzah smiled as usual, and showed her pretty teeth, but the captain looked after her, and said, "They have been tearing Mr Selby's woods to pieces." "What can they do for firewood?" said his wife. "Let us look out the rules of your father's coal store and shoe club," he said. CHAPTER SIX. THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. "Through slush and squad, When roads was bad, But hallus stop at the Vine and Hop." _Tennyson_.