I knew what that meant. It had been hinted at on several occasions since the birthday party. I was to go to Torribridge to live with Uncle Simeon.

I disliked Uncle Simeon, and did not want to leave my Grandmother. On the other hand I longed to see the world, and to get away from Aunt Jael. I must show her how glad I was at the prospect.

"You mean you're going to write to him about my going to live there?"

I said it in a cool pleased fashion, then at once regretted I had done so, for I knew Aunt Jael well enough to see that the pain the punishment she proposed would cause me was a more important thing than saving me from baneful Lawn influence; if I showed her too plainly I was glad to go to Torribridge, which on the whole I fancied I was, she might cancel the plan without more ado.

So I repeated: "You mean you're going to write to him about my going to live there?"—but this time my voice had a note of mournfulness; Aunt Jael sat up and stared. She failed to see through me, however; could not probe the depths of my cunning, as I the depths of her ill-will.

Grandmother comforted me: "'Twill be a change, my dear. Your Aunt and I think 'twill be a good and useful change for you. Your Aunt Martha will teach you many new things. Don't 'ee be tearful, my child: the Lord will watch over you."

Two days later Uncle Simeon arrived to take me. Pasty faced, white-livered, cringing little wretch, with his honeyed smile and honey-coloured hair. He sniffed as always.

"Good day, dear Miss Vickary. Good morning, dear Mrs. Lee. You too, dear little one. One is well pleased to see all one's kinsfolk looking so well in mind and body, well pleased indeed! One scarce knows how to express oneself. But one can give thanks, ah yes, one can give thanks."

We sat down to dinner. Food punctuated but did not check his flow of eloquence. He got the food on to his fork, but did not lift it. Instead he ducked his head and snatched, tearing the food from the fork as a wolf warm flesh from a bone. His eyes glistened as Mrs. Cheese placed a steaming mutton-pie before Aunt Jael.

"Your daughter, dear Mrs. Lee? Yes, dear Martha was well, when one left her this morning, and—D. V.—still is. She sends her fond greeting to you both. One took leave of her with a heavy heart, though 'tis only for a day, for one's love is so jealous, one's absences so rare. One took the eleven o'clock railway-train from Torribridge.... There were two ladies in the compartment with one. One was glad, ay glad indeed, to observe that ere the train started, they both whipped out their Bibles. One entered into earnest conversation with them. One was overjoyed, if surprised, to find that, although they were Baptists, they were good Christians."

"There are many such," interposed my Grandmother. "Don't 'ee be narrow, Simeon Greeber."

"Maybe, maybe, dear Mrs. Lee. God gives grace in unlikely places. Be that as it may, however, at Instow both ladies got out, and a gentleman entered the carriage, a man of means from his appearance, one would say. One remembered that he was but a sinner. One remembered the heavenly injunction: In season and out of season. One spoke a quiet word to him as to the Gospel plan. One was polite, if earnest. Alas, the poor sinner answered roughly. The Devil spoke in him. He used an evil word one's modesty forbids one to repeat. But in the Lord's service one must endure much. One suffered, but one forgave. Tonight he will be remembered in one's prayers. One was pained, hurt, wounded, grieved—but angry,—no! Anger is not the sin which doth most easily beset one." (What was? I wondered. Gluttony perhaps, I thought, as I watched his staccato snatches at a big second helping of the mutton-pie.) "One looked again at the face of the handsome sinner opposite. A voice spoke within one: 'Be not weary in well doing,' but a second effort at godly conversation yielded, alas, no better result. One had done one's duty, and for the rest of the journey one reflected on the different Eternities facing the poor sinner's soul and one's own. The railway train reached Tawborough in the Lord's good time, and here one is, rejoiced to see all one's dear relatives ... rejoiced indeed...."

The moment Mrs. Cheese had cleared away the table-cloth, Aunt Jael was curt: "To business, to business!" And to me, "You're not wanted. Make yourself scarce."

I went upstairs to the spare bedroom, meaning to sit on a settee by the window and daydream away the time. I opened the window. The dining-room downstairs must have been open too, for I could hear Aunt Jael's voice booming away. "Eight shillings" and "Child" I heard. I should never have tried to overhear, but now I found I could hear without trying—by the window here, whither I had come quite by accident. I could not help hearing if I tried—perhaps I had been led to the window-seat by the Lord, perhaps it was providential, perhaps I ought to listen. Besides, Mrs. Cheese did it: I caught her red-handed listening outside the door one day when Aunt Jael and Grandmother were discussing a rise in her wages. And eavesdropping was not a sin. There was no commandment, "Thou shalt not eavesdrop"—Our Lord had never forbidden it—there was nothing in the Word against it. And what harm would be done? As they were discussing my future, I should know soon enough in any case what they decided, so why not know at once?... No deceivers in the world are so easily deceived as self-deceivers. I leaned right out of the window.

"Agreed then, Simeon Greeber. You will take her for twelve months, treat her as your own boy, and have the same lessons taught her by Martha. And eight shillings a week for the board."

"Eight shillings?" queried a treacly voice, yet pained as well as treacly. "Eight shillings?" It is impossible to describe the sweet sad stress he laid on the numeral, or the wealth of poignant sentiment that stress conveyed. Not of greed or graspingness, oh dear no! Rather of pained sorrow at the greed and graspingness of Aunt Jael. "Eight? One fears 'twill be difficult. If it were nine, one might hope, one might struggle, one might endeavour—"

"Stuff and nonsense. A child of nine years old, eating little; and your table don't groan with good things. Eight is enough and to spare. Not one ha'penny-piece more. Yea or nay?"

A pause, ere Christian meekness gave in to unchristian ultimatum.

"Well then, dear Miss Vickary, one will try, one will hope—"

"Call the child," she cut him short.

I fled from the window guiltily. "Yes, Grandmother, I'm coming," I called back.

Uncle Simeon stayed the night: my last at Tawborough. Grandmother was kind. I did not know how I loved her till I felt I was going to lose her. This was my first big step in life. I was losing my old moorings, and sailing off to a new world. My mouth was dry, as it is when the heart is sick and apprehensive. Aunt Jael was adamant against my spending even occasional Lord's Days at Tawborough. I was to visit Bear Lawn but once during the year, though 'twas but nine miles away. There was no appeal against this: Aunt Jael had decided it.

Grandmother came to my bedroom. We read the twenty-third psalm together. Then she prayed for me, and we sang an old hymn together. At "Good-night, my dearie" I clung to her more than usual.

"There's only you in the world that really likes me."

"No, my dear, there is your good aunt. And there is God. Don't 'ee say nobody loves you when He is there. Don't 'ee think all the time of yourself. Think of making others happy. There'll be your little cousin Albert to befriend. Your Aunt Martha is kind, and will treat you well. That is why I'm letting 'ee go. Your Uncle Simeon too—"

"He's not kind," daringly.

"Hush, my dear, don't 'ee say so. He's a godly man, and fears the Lord exceedingly. He will treat you in a Christian way. And God will always be near you. Pray to Him every night, read in His word, sing to Him a joyful song of praise. Never forget that threefold duty and joy. Never forget, my dear. You will promise your Grandmother?"

"Yes, Grandmother, but 'twill be lonely."

"Your mother—my little Rachel—had worse trials than you, please God, will ever know; yet she praised God always. Will you be brave like her?"

"Yes, Grandmother," huskily, and I kissed her twice.

Next day, after an early dinner, we left Bear Lawn. I had a grim godspeed from the old armchair.

"No highty-tighty, no monkey tricks, no stubborn ways. Fear the Lord at all times,"—and a swift formal peck which was not swift enough to conceal perhaps a faint tinge of regret.

* * * * * * *

We left by rail. Uncle Simeon read his Bible the whole way to Torribridge, and never spoke a word. It was only my second journey by railway, and I had enough to interest me in looking out of the window. The country-side was bright with spring. Little did I foresee the different circumstances of my return journey.

I well remember our arrival. There was a tea-supper on the table, so meagre that my heart sank at the outset. There was my Aunt Martha. She seemed like a weak tired edition of my Grandmother. She looked miserable and underfed; I soon came to know that she was both. I regarded Albert, a dull heavy-faced boy with a big mouth and thick lips.

The latter soon opened. "Don't stare, you! Father, she's staring at me."

"It's not true. I'm not staring. I was just looking at him."

"Come, there, no answerings back in this house, learn that once for all." There was still a good deal of honey about Uncle Simeon's, still small voice, but it was flavoured with aloes now and other bitter things, whose presence he had kept hidden at Bear Lawn. The honeyed whine was now very near a snarl, as he showed his shiny white teeth and repeated, "Once for all." The Tawborough mask was being put aside already.

A clock outside struck the hour. I looked at the time-piece, which registered eight o'clock. So did he.

"She knows her bedroom, Martha? Yes. At eight she goes to bed, and eight in the morning we take our humble breakfast. Come now, to bed!"

I was faced with the Good-night difficulty. Albert I ignored, and he me. Aunt Martha was plain sailing. She looked kind, if weak and blurred. We kissed each other listlessly on the cheek. But from Uncle Simeon I shrank instinctively as I came near him. He saw my feelings, I saw he hated me for them, he saw that I felt his hate. That refusal to kiss was a silent declaration of inevitable war.

He took the offensive that very night, as the clock hands showed next morning.

I went upstairs with my candle, and sat down on a chair in the middle of the room. There was an unused smell about everything which seemed to add to my homesickness and sense of lost bearings. Bear Lawn had never been a gay and festive place, but it was home, and here in the dreary room the first-night-away-from-home feeling overcame me badly with all its disconsolate accompaniments of damp eyes and dry throat. The old injustice burned in my heart, the old bitterness came back. Why had I had to leave my Grandmother, the only one in the world who cared for me? Why was there nobody who loved me even more than that, in whose bosom I could hide my face and cry, whose love to me was wonderful? Why had the Lord left me no Mother who would have loved me best of all? The same old questions reduced me to the same old tears ... I pulled myself together and remembered my three-fold duty: to say my prayers, to read my psalm, to sing my hymn. I decided, with a true Saint's whim, to choose my nightly psalm by opening my Bible at random—I could gauge the whereabouts of the Psalms well enough, if only by the used look on the edge—and reading always the first psalm that caught my eye. Whether the Lord guided me to a choice of His own, or whether it was that my Bible opened naturally at so familiar a place, I do not know: anyway, there before me was the dirty, well-loved, well-thumbed page (page 537 I remember), and in the middle of it, plastered around with affectionate red crayon, stood my favourite 137th Psalm. I read aloud:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

At once the appropriateness of the words came to me. Never had I felt till now what I had been told a hundred times, that the Bible was written for me. Here was a psalm which expressed my identical sorrow:

I finished the psalm and then tried to sing my hymn as I had promised my Grandmother, but I could not. My heart and my voice failed me: How could I sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

I awoke next morning, refreshed, to see the bright sun shining in. I did not know the time, as nobody had called me, and I had no watch. Just as I had finished dressing, a clock outside struck, the same clock as the night before. I counted; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—on the eighth stroke I went downstairs. I'll be punctual, I said to myself. Uncle Simeon, Aunt Martha and Albert were already at the table. I looked at the timepiece; it marked nearly a quarter after the hour! Yet last evening it had tallied with the chime outside. Aunt Martha and I exchanged a brief matutinal peck; I found it easier, after the first effort the night before, to keep away from Uncle Simeon. "Good morning, Uncle," was all I said.

"Good morning," he replied, with a new touch of spite and venom in his whispering honeyed voice. "Not a good start, young woman. One said eight punctual for breakfast. 'Tis now fourteen minutes past."

"I came down the second the clock outside struck the hour. Last night it was the same time exactly. One of them must have gone wrong all of a sudden, or been altered perhaps."

"Altered? So you hint that this clock has been deliberately changed?" (I never thought of this till he suggested it, but then I knew; his shifty eyes betrayed him.) "One is not used to that sort of hint, and one has a way of dealing with it, a certain way."

I began my bowl of porridge. Meanwhile Uncle Simeon and Albert were beginning their eggs, and as soon as I had emptied my porringer, I looked around for mine. There was no egg within sight. I waited; none appeared. I plucked up my courage to ask.

"When is my egg coming, Aunt Martha?" There was a dead silence. Aunt Martha went red in the face, and looked uncomfortable. Uncle Simeon broke the silence. He looked hard at me, though never into my eyes.

"When is your egg coming? It is not coming. In one's house little girls are not pampered. They do not live on rich, unhealthy foods, nor wear sumptuous apparel. They do not lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches until a late hour, nor eat the lambs out of the flock, nor the calves out of the midst of the stall. They do not live in kings' houses; they live at Number One the Quay, Torribridge; under this Christian, if humble, roof. They eat humble Christian fare, and thank our Lord for it in a humble Christian way. If a fine generous bowl of porridge does not suffice, there is always plenty of good, plain bread. Your Aunt will give you as many crusts as you can wisely eat."

So I was to be starved, and preached at in my starvation! He was going to make sure of his eight shillings' worth. I felt red with anger, but held my tongue, schooled to silence by ten years of Aunt Jael. Aunt Martha looked ashamed of his meanness, but was far too weak to fight it. What will she ever had was stamped out of her on her wedding-day, poor wretch. Albert, dull, greedy little beast, gloated coarsely over my discomfiture, his tongue (all yellow with egg) hanging out of his mouth. Uncle Simeon tried to disguise his triumph under his usual loathsome mask of meekness, or perhaps he felt that he had gone too far too soon.

"Come, come! One is forgiving, one can be generous, merciful," and handed me the little top of his egg slit off by his breakfast knife.

This was adding insult to injury. Tears of anger stood in my eyes, but I managed to get out a calm "No, thank you," which enabled him to write to my Grandmother, I afterwards found, that "the little one refuses even part of an egg for her breakfast."

After breakfast came prayers. He whined where Aunt Jael thundered. Then came lessons with Albert and Aunt Martha. The former was stupid to a degree; the latter was very interesting to me, after my years of Miss Glory, especially in the French, to which I took at once. Dinner consisted of an interminable grace, three times as long as Grandmother's longest, and a tiny portion of hash. For "afters" there was a roly-poly pudding, quite plain, with no lovely hot jam worked in between the folds. Uncle Simeon and Albert had cold raspberry jam with theirs, out of a jar on the table. Aunt Martha and I did not. Manifestly the womenfolk at Number One the Quay did not live in Kings' houses, if the males did. Uncle Simeon was the King and Albert the King's son. My slice, the nasty dry bit at the end, was not four mouthfuls. He served everything.

After dinner Albert and I were sent out for a walk together.

"Where are we going to?" I asked.

"Where I like," was the reply, in a sulky voice, ruder than he dared use before his father. "And look here you, learn at the start, when you go walks with me you'll do what I tell you. And if you see me doing aught as I choose to, and there's any sneaking—I've got a fist you know."

The little brute lowered. I wondered what the dark things he hinted at might be; pitch-and-toss with boon companions of a like age, I afterwards discovered. Anyway, his hand too was against me: I was a young Hagar. For tea I had a bit of plain bread and a mug of hot milk and water, though Uncle Simeon and Albert had butter and whortleberry jam with their bread, and tea to drink. Afterwards I worked at the morning's lessons, sums and grammar and je donne, tu donnes, il donne. Then knitting—grey woollen socks for Brethren missionaries—evening prayers—my own bedside devotions—and bed.

All days were much like the first one, when not worse. It was the most miserable period of my life. Soon the daily round at Bear Lawn became almost cheerful in my memory. I was wretchedly underfed; though I sometimes lost appetite, and could not even eat the scanty fare he allowed me. When I left food on my plate, unlike Aunt Jael he did not force me. Rather he made it a good excuse for saying I had more to eat than I needed. My morning porridge was what I liked best, and one day I said so. "Ah, gluttony!" he cried, and snatched my porringer, pouring off the milk and scraping the brown sugar on to his own plate; "Whosoever lusteth after her victuals, the same is lost. Ah, to make one's belly one's God, 'tis a sin before the Most High!"

A starvation day in the attic was a favourite punishment, as it combined economy with cruelty. At times I should have fainted away half-famished but for what Aunt Martha privily conveyed me.

Three evil passions, I soon found, held pride of place in Uncle Simeon; meanness, greed and cruelty. Sometimes, if at a meal-time Aunt Martha went into the kitchen for a moment, he would get up with a cat-like speed, scrape all the butter off her slice of bread-and-butter, and spread it on his own piece. Aunt Martha said nothing, to such depths of fear and obedience can women sink; though she flushed the first time she saw that I saw this husbandly deed. He was too mean to keep a servant; helped once a week by a charwoman, a tall funereal Exclusive Sister named Miss Woe. Aunt Martha did all the work of a house twice the size of Bear Lawn.

Cruelty came nearest to his heart. He flogged me brutally. The first time the trouble began over a letter, a few days only after I arrived at Torribridge. He came into the dining-room, sniffing spitefully. I knew something was afoot by the look of mean anticipated triumph in his eyes. He held out a letter for my inspection, placing his thumb over the name of the person to whom it was addressed. I could read "1, The Quay, Torribridge"; the handwriting was my Grandmother's.

"'Tis a letter from my Grandmother," I cried, "a letter for me."

"A letter from your dear Grannie, true, true; but who said it was for you? Who said that? ha! ha!"

"It is, I know it is. Give it me, please."

Sniffing and sneering, he handed it across. There was "Miss Mary Lee" true enough; but the envelope had been opened.

"'Tis mine then; who opened it?"

"Who opened it? One who will open every letter that comes if one chooses, in accordance with your dear Great-Aunt's wishes."

"It's not true. I'm ten years old. Can't I open my own letters from my own Grandmother? She's my only friend in the world. It's not true."

"Have a care what you say, young miss, have a care. There is another little friend for you in the drawing-room. You shall be introduced at once."

I followed him upstairs, rabbit-like, not knowing what to expect. He locked the door. "Here is the Little Friend," he said, fetching from a corner a ribbed yellow cane. He gave me a cruel thrashing, clawing my left shoulder and whirling me round and round. The room was enormous; a spacious thrashing place. He hurt me as much as Aunt Jael on a field-day with the ship's rope, but I bawled less; no pain could draw from me the shrieks I knew he longed to hear.

Never more than four or five days passed without his thrashing me. I could review impartially the modes and methods of the two tyrants I knew: Aunt Jael with her stout thorned stick, Uncle Simeon with his lithe ribbed cane. Aunt Jael dealt hard brutal blows, Uncle Simeon sly mean strokes. She hit and banged and bruised. He swished and stung and cut. Hers was the Thud and his the Whirr. Both of them would have been prosecuted nowadays; there was no N.S.P.C.C. then to violate the sacred right of the individual to maltreat his human chattels. Both Great-Aunt and Uncle always left me bruised, and sometimes-bleeding. Yet of the two I dreaded his canings more; because he seemed so much the viler. Not that the dust of the Torribridge beatings formed as it were a halo round the Tawborough ones, not that Aunt Jael's grim masterpieces were becoming a winsome memory, not that a safe distance lent any enchantment to my mental view of her strong right arm. But with a child's instinctive perspicuity, I felt, though I could not have put my feelings into words, that there was some notion with my Great-Aunt beyond mere brutality; some sense of duty, of loyalty to her own Draconian creed. Her Proverbs counselled her thus. Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying—little she spared for mine;—I found it needed loud houseful of crying for briefest moment of sparing. He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes—then indeed was her love for me exceeding great, out-measuring far the love of Paris for Helen for whose sake terrific war was made and Ilion's plains shook with thunder of armed hosts and Troy town fell, or King Solomon's for his Beloved in the garden of lilies and pomegranates. She thought she was doing her duty.

I knew that Uncle Simeon had no such excuse, and that he was something much worse than Aunt Jael: a coward. He was craven, creeping, caddish. He liked to flog me because I was weak and small and defenceless. His pale face sweated, his eyes lit up with a loathsome triumph, his lips were wet with joy. His cold clammy hands—like wet claws—gripped my shoulder. As evil breeds always evil, his hate bred hate in me: a physical, unhealthy hate I feel to this day, though he is long since gone to his judgment.

I had no friend, no affection, to protect me from this creature or compensate me for his presence. Aunt Martha, in whom her mother's gentleness ran to feebleness, was sometimes petulant, often kind (if she dared), and always null. With Albert, except on walks, I had little to do. Sometimes he bullied me, or spat or cursed at me, when there was nobody about. At times he was bearable, because too idle to be anything else. I missed my Grandmother terribly, whom I saw through this dark atmosphere as a very angel of kindness.

Life was even now more monotonous than at Bear Lawn, except for the daily walks: there were no changes, no variety, no visitors. Once indeed Mr. Nicodemus Shufflebottom, who had been ministering on Lord's Day to the Torribridge Exclusive Saints, and had missed the last conveyance back to Tawborough, was reluctantly put up for the night by Uncle Simeon. The ill-concealed tortures the latter endured at beholding the egg and bacon Aunt Martha had the temerity to put before Mr. Nicodemus for his breakfast, was a delight that stands fresh in my memory today.

On Sundays the week's monotony was hardly broken by the Meeting, a dull funereal affair, with none of the godly enthusiasm of our Great Meeting. Some ten dull or consumptive-looking creatures attended. Uncle Simeon was the one High Priest: he did fifty per cent of the praying, seventy-five per cent of the exposition, chose and called out almost all the hymns, and always took and "apportioned" the offertory. Nobody else counted for anything. I can just recall one Brother Atonement Gelder, who sniffled richly throughout the service in away that reminded me of oysters. I see, vaguely, a Brother Berry; and, more vaguely, a Brother Smith. They are shadows; the Meeting never filled a place in my life as at Tawborough. I remember more clearly Uncle Simeon's long sticky half-whispered supplications to the Lord, and one particular hymn we droned out every Lord's Day:

Most of the hymns were in the old London Hymn Book we used at Tawborough, so I could join in the singing from the very first. It pained me to hear the thin peevish rendering the Torribridge Exclusives gave of He sitteth o'er the water-floods, or their pale piping of Brother Briggs' stentorian favourite I hear the Accuser Roar. Aunt Martha and I squeaked feebly, Brother Atonement Gelder sniffled in tune, and Uncle Simeon whispered the words to himself with his eye in godly thankfulness turned heavenward. We stood up for the hymns; it is the only Meeting—but one—at which I have known this done. We worshipped in a dark stuffy little room behind a baker's shop. Aunt Martha scarcely spoke to the other Saints or they to her.

My one idea was to get back to Bear Lawn. Aunt Jael said I was to live here for at least one year, and for three if it proved satisfactory—satisfactory to her. I was to have one holiday in Tawborough each year; but not till the first year was out. Grandmother had said she would come over sometimes; I knew that Uncle Simeon was not eager to have her and would find excuses for delaying her visits. Could I abide it for a year? Fear and ill-usage and hunger were worrying me into a state of all-the-time nervousness and wretchedness beyond what I had ever experienced. How could I tell Grandmother this, and how much I wanted to come back to her? He read all my letters, and I knew she would disapprove if I tried to write without his knowing. What should I do? Counting the days and crossing them off each night on the wall-almanac in my bedroom might help to make them pass more quickly.

After all Aunt Jael was no magnet drawing me back to Tawborough. If life was worse here with him, it was bad enough there with her. Life was a wretched business altogether. Still, Uncle Simeon was worse than Aunt Jael, and if the walks and fresh air I got here compensated for the better food at Bear Lawn, my Grandmother weighed down the balance overwhelmingly in favour of the latter. I must get back. But how? I was ignorant and inexperienced beyond belief. I first thought of just leaving the house one day, and running back to Tawborough. I could manage the nine miles from one door to the other,—but the doors! I already felt Uncle Simeon's claws dragging me in as I sought to cross his threshold, and Aunt Jael's heavy hand on my shoulder at the other end if ever I should reach it. If I dared to run away, even if not sent back to worse days here, I could see a bad time of punishment and wrath ahead at Bear Lawn. It would be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, bandying myself between the thorned stick and the ribbed cane, escaping from unhappiness to unhappiness. It was hell here, and near it there—hell everywhere. If my face was as disagreeable as my heart was bitter and wretched, I must have looked a dismal little fright. Albert assured me that I did.