"I should not wonder if he did know how!" said Winifred. "I have heard my father say that some of the best cooks he ever saw were West India negroes." "Dat de livin' truth, young missus!" said Jack, eagerly. "My moder she cook for old massa, and I learnt all her ways, for I was big boy before massa sold me. You just let me try, that's all!" "Well, well, we will see! See who is knocking there!" The knocker was no less a person than Dame Evans herself. That good woman had been thrown into ten times more than her usual fume and flutter by the receipt of her niece's note, which she had been unable to read till her husband came home. Then indeed there was a breeze. Dame Evans wept and scolded—declared that there never was such an unlucky woman, and that everything turned out just to spite her. "Here, just as we had made up our minds to go out into the country—to the very house this wilful, troublesome girl was born in and was always raving about—and an awful piece of work it will be, no doubt, and endless damage—Winifred must go and expose herself to the fever, so that we cannot take her without danger to all our precious lives. And as if that was not enough, she must go and make up her mind to stay and nurse these gentlefolks, who are neither kith nor kin to her. I declare it is enough to provoke a saint!" concluded Dame Evans, in her usual style. "Since you could not take her without danger, it is well that she has made up her mind to remain with my Lady Corbet!" observed Dame Joyce, who had run in to hear and tell the latest news about the fever, the Irish army King James was bringing over, and the dreadful doings of the papists. "The Corbets are fine, open-handed people, and can pay them that serve them—that is one thing." "And suppose they can—is that any reason my niece should endanger her precious life and put me to all this inconvenience?" said Dame Evans, turning angrily upon her visitor. "Thank goodness, we are not dependent upon the pay of great folks, nor need to be, seeing we have means of our own, and know how to use them too, if we don't wear lace whisks and camlet gowns every day!" casting a glance of supreme contempt upon the somewhat superabundant finery of the goldsmith's wife. Good, easy Dame Joyce laughed, and addressed herself to Master Evans. "And so you are going out into the country, for all the world like gentlefolks. But maybe you will not be so much better off, for they say the fever was very bad at Bridgewater last time. Who knows," she added mischievously, "that the seeds of the fever may not be remaining in the house, since your father and sister died of it, and the place has been shut up for so long?"