“Eh, Mrs. Ashton, madam! yo’ han takken us unawares! an’ theere is na a bit o’ flesh meat i’ th’ heause; an’ th’ butcher’s cart wunna be reawnd agen till Setterday! But awm downreet glad to see yo’ an’ th’ young ladies” (she dropped a respectful curtsey), “an’ a’ lookin’ so weel. Aw wur afeard yo’ wur no’ comin’ this Summer.” “Never mind the butcher’s meat, Mrs. Hulme; having come to Carr we must do as Carr does; I do not doubt we shall fare very well,” said the stately lady, reassuringly. “I trust we shall find your good husband free from pain, and Mr. Clegg and your family in health.” Bess thanked Mrs. Ashton for her kind inquiries, but somehow she boggled over the “Mr. Clegg.” She was proud enough of his advancement, but to her he was still “Jabez;” and he did not seek to be otherwise. There was a difficulty about the luggage, no men being about. By this time old Simon was nearly down the hill, little Sim following at his heels, his face, hands, and pinafore stained with fruit. “I run for Joe,” cried crippled Sim, as Bess tried the weight of a trunk, and Ellen interposed. Run indeed! It was the very travestie of a run! “Well, yo’ see as heaw o’ Moore’s folk are eawt i’ th’ fields cuttin’ whoats [oats]. Feyther an’ me con carry one on em atween us. They’re noän so heavy.” Mrs. Ashton would not hear of it. Just then little Sim came back with Joe—his most particular friend, to whom he was chief patron—a drivelling idiot, a man in frame, a child in heart and brain. He was a pitiable object, the scoff of the rabble, but he had sense enough to know his protectors. At the instance of the four-years-old child, he shouldered the box with a vacant chuckle; and Sim, loaded with an oval pasteboard bandbox half as big as himself, waddled after him as fast as his deformity would permit. Before the travellers could reach the top of the avenue Jabez Clegg was with them, the other trunk upon his shoulder. He had heard at the “White Hart” of their arrival, and had almost sacrificed the dignity of his position in _his_ desire to run. There were more greetings, accompanied by a cordial shaking of hands; and Bess and Simon looked on with pleasure, not unmixed with pain, that the foundling they had adopted and reared had mounted far above their heads, albeit in rising he had drawn them up too. He breakfasted not with them in the house-place, but with the new-comers in the parlour; and Bess herself waited upon them, Meg, her little maid, being off in the harvest field gleaning for a bed-ridden mother. She heard him conversing freely, if deferentially, with the lofty Mrs. Ashton on topics and in a language her provincial tongue could never compass. She saw him turn to answer the arch sallies of Miss Ashton, and the quieter observations of Miss Chadwick, and noted that the dark eyes of the latter kindled when he spoke, and her cheeks had a warmer glow, as if they caught their hue from the flushed face of Jabez.