“Was Mrs. John Musgrave in the business? Was she in your hands? I declare! Did he marry her from your house?” “She was come of wild folks,” said Miss Price; “there was gipsy blood in them. They had a little bit of a sheep farm up among the hills in their best days, and a lone house, where there wasn’t a stranger to be seen twice in a year. ’Lizabeth Bampfylde, that’s her mother, comes about the village still. I can’t tell you what she does, she sells her eggs and chickens, and maybe she does tell fortunes. I won’t say. She never told me mine. I took a fancy to the lass, and I said, ‘Bring her to me. I’ll take her; I’ll train her a bit. Oh, how little we know! If I had but let her bide on the fells!--but what a pretty one she was! Such eyes as she had; and a skin that wasn’t to say dark--it was brown, but so clear! like the water when the sun is in it.” “You seem to think a great deal of people being pretty.” “So I do, ma’am, more than I ought. A woman should have more sense. I’m near as easy led away as the gentlemen. But there’s different kinds of beauty, and that is what they never see as want it most. There’s pretty faces that I can’t abide. They seem to give me a turn. Now that’s where the men fails,” said the little dressmaker; “all’s one to them, good or bad, they never see any difference. Lily was never one of the bad ones, poor dear. Lily? yes, that was the young woman; but she’s not such a young woman, not a girl now. She’ll be thirty-seven or eight, close upon that, if she’s living this day.” “She is not living--she died five years ago; and Miss Musgrave won’t believe me that she ought to go into black for her,” said Mrs. Pennithorne. “Ah!” said Miss Price with a sharp cry. She dropped her work at her feet with an indifference to it which deeply aggrieved Mrs. Pen. The announcement took her altogether by surprise, and went to her heart. “Dead! oh my poor Lily, my poor Lily! Was I thinking ill o’ thee? Dead! and so many left--and her in her prime!” Sudden sobs stopped the good little woman’s speech, with which she struggled as she went on, making a brave effort to recover herself as she picked up the little dress. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but it was so sudden; it took me unprepared. Oh, ma’am, that’s the worst of it when you have to do with girls. Few of them go through with the business, though it would be best for them; they turn every one to her own way; that’s Scripture, but I mean it. They marry, and they think themselves so grand with their children, and it kills ’em. Oh, if I had but left her on the fells! or if she had stuck by the business like me!” “I did not think you took so much interest in her,” said Mrs. Pen, feeling guilty. “If I had known you cared, I would have been more careful what I said. But nobody seemed to think much of _her_. It is always the Musgraves the Vicar speaks of.”