He hobbled over toward a corner of the cottage, where a box-bed stood out from the wall. It was closed in all around like a great cupboard, with sliding shutters in the front. These were drawn back, but the interior was concealed by a curtain. He drew aside this curtain and within lay a little girl about eleven years old with thin wasted cheeks and hollow sunken eyes. She stretched out her small hand as the two children approached and a smile lit up the white drawn face. Aline stooped and kissed her. “Oh, Joan,” she said, “I wish you would get well, but it is always the same, no sooner are you up than you are back in bed again. I have been asking Master Mowbray about you and he has promised that the leech from Barnard Castle shall come and see you as soon as he can get word to him.” “It is good of you to think and plan about me, Mistress Aline, and I believe I am not quite so badly to-day, but I wish that horrid old ‘Moll o’ the graves’ would not come in here and look at me. She does frighten me so. Mother was always so frightened of Moll.” “She is a wretched old thing,” said Audry, “but do not let us think about her.” “You mustn’t thank us, anybody would do the same,” said Aline; “you cannot think how sorry we are to see you like this, and you must just call me Aline the same as I call you Joan. See! Audry and I have brought you a few flowers and some little things from the Hall that old Elspeth has put up for us, and when the leech comes, he will soon make you well again.” “I sometimes wonder whether I shall ever get well any more; each time I have to go back to bed I seem to be worse. All my folk are gone now and I am the only one left. The flowers are right bonnie though and the smell of them does me good,” she added, as she lifted the bunch of early carnations that the children had brought. After she had spoken she let her hand fall and lay quite still gazing at the two as though even the few words had been too great an effort. The bed looked very uncomfortable and Aline and Audry did their best to smooth it a little, after which Joan closed her eyes and seemed inclined to sleep. “I wish we could get her up to the Hall,” said Aline in a whisper, “the smoke is so terrible and I never saw such a dreadful place as that bed.” “Mother would never hear of it; so it’s no use your thinking of such a thing.” They returned to the fire and sat down on the stools for a few moments before leaving. “Ay, the child is about right,” said the old man, “her poor mother brought her here from Kirkoswald when her man died last November. Sarah Moulton was a sort of cousin of my wife who has been lying down in Middleton churchyard this many a long year. She lived in this very house as a girl and seemed to think she would be happier here than in Kirkoswald. Well, it was not the end of March before she had gone too and the lassie is all that is left.”