“But, Pollie,” said Lucy, “if you can really afford the time, I can afford to pay you—I really can,” she assured her former servant, seeing that she looked pitifully at her. “First of all, I earn a good deal by my work, if I can get a trustworthy person to work for me in turn; and secondly, my good friend Mrs. May, whom you have seen, refuses to take any wages, because she says she knows she will want outside help. I could afford, Pollie, to give you six shillings a week if you will come here for two days weekly from eight till four, and of course you would dine here.” “Why, that would pay our rent!” cried Pollie joyfully. “And I know what working in a nice house like this is, with a proper sitting down to good food. Husband, he said to me, ‘If you go charing, it’ll just be cleaning up after slovenly hussies and getting meals o’ broken meat.’ Won’t he be pleased! And, oh, Mrs. Challoner, this makes me quite sure you are friends with me again. I only wish I’d been reasonable, and had treated you friendly, and taken counsel with you, and not been so sudden-like. Yet there’s some ladies make a servant believe she’s of no account, and girls are too ready to listen to ’em,” added Pollie, with a side glance of memory at that conversation with Mrs. Brand which had so disturbed and unsettled her. “But now I’m sure we’re friends again, ma’am.” “I’m sorry to have ever led you to think otherwise,” said Lucy. “I was sad and sore myself, and it hurt me to think that, after all the time we had been together——” “And all you’d done for me and my folks,” murmured Pollie. “You should act so suddenly in such an important matter, with no reference to me or my trying position,” Mrs. Challoner went on. “Perhaps, in my turn, I was not considerate enough of your standpoint. Anyhow, Pollie, as you say, now we know we are friends again.” That was a pleasant interlude. Better even than its immediate comfort and security was the mystic hint that it seemed to convey not only of a far-off greater “restitution of all things,” but also of a present protecting power—that Fatherly love which takes us up when, in the ways of life or of death, parents and spouses and friends forsake or fail us. “Goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life.” We have to walk forward in that faith, and only by such walking forward can faith be transformed into sacred, secret knowledge. It was well, indeed, that there was something pleasant. For, alas for human nature, it is by foreseeing evil as to its doings that one can most easily establish reputation as a far-seeing prophet! Some days passed before the arrival of Clementina’s box and the receipt of the postal order were acknowledged from Hull. Then a little parcel came. “I should not wonder but the poor soul, if she has come a little to her senses, has sent some bit of her needlework as a peace-offering,” observed Mrs. Challoner as she unfastened the string.