“The Vicar thought of nothing but Miss Mary,” said Miss Price hastily; then she corrected herself, “I mean of womanfolk,” she said; “the Musgraves, ma’am, as you say, that was all he thought of. And that’s always the way, as far as I can judge. The gentry thinks of their own side, and we that are but small folks, we think of ours; it’s natural. Miss Musgrave was not much to me. I never made her but one thing, and that was a cotton, a common morning frock; she was too grand to have her things made by the likes of me; but Lily, she sat by my side and sewed at the same seam. And she’s dead! the bonniest lass on all the water, as the village folks say.” “You don’t talk like the village folks, Miss Price.” “No. I’m from the south, as they call it--except when a word creeps in now and again through being so long here. It’s all pinned and straight, ma’am, now. It was done almost before I heard the news--and I’m glad of it, for my eyesight goes when I begin to cry. I don’t think you can go wrong now,” said Miss Price with a sigh, knowing the powers of her patroness in that direction. “It’s as well as I can make it--pinned and basted, and straight before your hand. No, thank you kindly, nothing for me. I’m that put out that the best thing I can do is to get home.” “But dear me, Miss Price--as she is not even a relation!” “A relation, what’s that? A girl that you’ve brought up is more than a relation,” cried the dressmaker, forgetting her manners. And she made up her patterns tremulously in a little bundle, and hurried out with the briefest leavetaking, which was not civil, Mrs. Pennithorne said indignantly. But Miss Price, in her way, was as important as the Vicar’s wife herself, being alone in her profession, and enjoying a monopoly. It is possible to be rude, when you are a monopolist, without damage to your trade; but this, to do her justice, was not the motive which actuated the little dressmaker, who, in her nature, was anxiously polite, and indisposed to offend any one; but the news she had heard was too much for all her little decorums. She made a long round out of her way to pass by the Castle, though she could scarcely tell why she did so--nor it was not the children that were most in her mind. Indeed she scarcely remembered them at all, in her excitement of pain and hot grief which took the shape of a kind of fiery resentment against life and nature. Children! what was the good of the children--helpless things that took a woman’s life, and made even the rest of death bitter to her, wringing her heart with misery to leave them after costing her her life! She was an old maid not by accident, but by nature; and what were a couple of miserable little children in exchange for the life of Lily! But when, not expecting to see them, not thinking of them save in this bitter way, Miss Price saw the two children at the door of the hall, another quick springing sensation rose suddenly in her hasty soul. She