"She asked me to be sure and let her have one line to say you got home safely. I have given your love, Lucy." "Thank you, Karl. And now you axe going to the post." "And now I am going to the post. And I must make haste, or I shall find the box shut." He took his hand from her shoulder, where it had momentarily rested, and crossed the grass, Lucy looking after him. "How thoughtful and kind he is!" she soliloquised. "It is just as though he loved me." And her imagination went off wandering at random, as imagination will. Once more she reverted to that former possibility---of condoning the past and becoming reconciled again. It was _very_ good of him, and she felt it so, to have stayed that week in London. She fancied he had done it that she might know he did not spend his time at the Maze in her absence. And so, the evening shadows came on, and still Lucy sat there, lost in her dreams. Miss Blake, it has been said, had hurried from dinner, to go to vespers. As she turned into the road from the Court, she saw a boy a little in advance of her on the other side, his basket on his arm. It was the doctor's boy, Cris Lumley, against whom Miss Blake had a grievance. She crossed over and caught him up just as he rang at the Maze gate. "Now, Cris Lumley, what have you to say for yourself! For three days you have not appeared at class." "'Tain't my fault," said Cris Lumley, who was just as impudent as he looked; a very different boy indeed from civil-natured Tom Pepp. "It be master's." "How is it your master's?" "What master says is this here: 'I be to attend to him and my place; or I be to give it up, if I wants to kick up my heels all day at school.'" "I don't believe you," said Miss Blake. "I shall speak to Mr. Moore." "Just do then," said the independent boy. "The fact of the case is no doubt this, Cris Lumley--that you play truant for half the day sometimes, on the plea of being all that while at school." "Master said another thing, he did," resumed the young gentleman, ignoring the last accusation. "He said as if Parson Sumnor warn't no longer good enough for me to learn religion from, he'd get another boy in my place, that he was good enough for. There! you may ask him whether he said it or not." Declining to bandy further words with him until she should have seen the surgeon, Miss Blake was hastening on, when the fringe of her mantle caught against his medicine basket. It reminded her that some one must be ill. Battling for a moment with her curiosity, but not for long, she condescended to inquire who was ill at the Maze. "It be the missis," replied Cris. "The mistress! Do you mean Mrs. Grey?" Mr. Lumley nodded. "What is the matter with _her?_" "Got a baby," said the boy shortly. For the instant Miss Blake felt struck into herself, and was dumb. She did not believe it. "He were born yesterday," added the boy. "This be some physic for him: and this be the missis's."