“HOW pleased the boy looks, to be sure!” observed Woodruffe to his wife, as his son Allan caught up little Moss (as Maurice had chosen to call himself before he could speak plain) and made him jump from the top of the drawers upon the chair, and then from the chair to the ground. “He is making all that racket just because he is so pleased he does not know what to do with himself.”

“I suppose he will forgive Fleming now for carrying off Abby,” said the mother. “I say, Allan, what do you think now of Abby marrying away from us?”

“Why, I think it’s a very good thing. You know she never told me that we should go and live where she lived, and in such a pretty place, too, where I may have a garden of my own, and see what I can make of it—all fresh from the beginning, as father says.”

“You are to try your hand at the business, I know,” replied the mother, “but I never heard your father, nor any one else, say that the place was a pretty one. I did not think new railway stations had been pretty places at all.”

“It sounds so to him, naturally,” interposed Woodruffe. “He hears of a south aspect, and a slope to the north for shelter, and the town seen far off; and that sounds all very pleasant. And then, there is the thought of the journey, and the change, and the fun of getting the ground all into nice order, and, best of all, the seeing his sister so soon again. Youth is the time for hope and joy, you know, love.”

And Woodruffe began to whistle, and stepped forward to take his turn at jumping Moss, whom he carried in one flight from the top of the drawers to the floor. Mrs. Woodruffe smiled, as she thought that youth was not the only season, with some people, for hope and joy.

Her husband, always disposed to look on the bright side, was particularly happy this evening. The lease of his market-garden ground was just expiring. He had prospered on it; and would have desired nothing better than to live by it as long as he lived at all. He desired this so much that he would not believe a word of what people had been saying for two years past, that his ground would be wanted by his landlord on the expiration of the lease, and that it would not be let again. His wife had long foreseen this; but not till the last moment would he do what she thought should have been done long before—offer to buy the ground. At the ordinary price of land, he could accomplish the purchase of it; but when he found his landlord unwilling to sell, he bid higher and higher, till his wife was so alarmed at the rashness, that she was glad when a prospect of entire removal opened. Woodruffe was sure that he could have paid off all he offered at the end of a few years; but his partner thought it would have been a heavy burden on their minds, and a sad waste of money; and she was therefore, in her heart, obliged to the landlord for persisting in his refusal to sell.

When that was settled, Woodruffe became suddenly sure that he could pick up an acre or two of land somewhere not far off. But he was mistaken; and, if he had not been mistaken, market-gardening was no longer the profitable business it had been, when it enabled him to lay by something every year. By the opening of a railway, the townspeople, a few miles off, got themselves better supplied with vegetables from another quarter. It was this which put it into the son-in-law’s head to propose the removal of the family into Staffordshire, where he held a small appointment on a railway. Land might be had at a low rent near the little country station where his business lay; and the railway brought within twenty minutes’ distance a town where there must be a considerable demand for garden produce. The place was in a raw state at present; and there were so few houses, that, if there had been a choice of time, the Flemings would rather have put off the coming of the family till some of the cottages already planned had been built; but the Woodruffes must remove in September, and all parties agreed that they should not mind a little crowding for a few months. Fleming’s cottage was to hold them all till some chance of more accommodation should offer.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Woodruffe, after standing for some time, half whistling and thinking, with that expression on his face which his wife had long learned to be afraid of, “I’ll write to-morrow—let’s see—I may as well do it to-night;” and he looked round for paper and ink. “I’ll write to Fleming, and get him to buy the land for me at once.”

“Before you see it?” said his wife, looking up from her stocking mending.

“Yes. I know all about it, as much as if I were standing on it this moment; and I am sick of this work—of being turned out just when I had made the most of a place, and got attached to it. I’ll make a sure thing of it this time, and not have such a pull at my heart-strings again. And the land will be cheaper now than later; and we shall go to work upon it with such heart, if it is our own! Eh?”

“Certainly, if we find, after seeing it, that we like it as well as we expect. I would just wait till then.”

“As well as we expect! Why, bless my soul! don’t we know all about it? It is not any land-agent or interested person, that has described it to us; but our own daughter and her husband; and do not they know what we want? The quantity at my own choice; the aspect capital; plenty of water (only too much, indeed); the soil anything but poor, and sand and marl within reach to reduce the stiffness; and manure at command, all along the railway, from half-a-dozen towns; and osier-beds at hand (within my own bounds if I like) giving all manner of convenience for fencing, and binding, and covering! Why, what would you have?”

“It sounds very pleasant, certainly.”

“Then, how can you make objections? I can’t think where you look, to find any objections?”

“I see none now, and I only want to be sure that we shall find none when we arrive.”

“Well! I do call that unreasonable! To expect to find any place on earth altogether unobjectionable! I wonder what objection could be so great as being turned out of one after another, just as we have got them into order. Here comes our girl. Well, Becky, I see how you like the news! Now, would not you like it better still if we were going to a place of our own, where we should not be under any landlord’s whims? We should have to work, you know, one and all. But we would get the land properly manured, and have a cottage of our own in time; would not we? Will you undertake the pigs, Becky?”

“Yes, father; and there are many things I can do in the garden too. I am old and strong, now; and I can do much more than I have ever done here.”

“Aye; if the land was our own,” said Woodruffe, with a glance at his wife. She said no more, but was presently up stairs putting Moss to bed. She knew, from long experience, how matters would go. After a restless night, Woodruffe spoke no more of buying the land without seeing it; and he twice said, in a meditative, rather than a communicative way, that he believed it would take as much capital as he had to remove his family, and get his new land into fit condition for spring crops.

II.

“You may look out now for the place. Look out for our new garden. We are just there now,” said Woodruffe to the children as the whistle sounded, and the train was approaching the station. It had been a glorious autumn day from the beginning; and for the last hour, while the beauty of the light on fields and trees and water had been growing more striking, the children, tired with the novelty of all that they had seen since morning, had been dropping asleep. They roused up suddenly enough at the news that they were reaching their new home; and thrust their heads to the windows, eagerly asking on which side they were to look for their garden. It was on the south, the left-hand side; but it might have been anywhere, for what they could see of it. Below the embankment was something like a sheet of gray water, spreading far away.

“It is going to be a foggy night,” observed Woodruffe. The children looked into the air for the fog, which had always, in their experience, arrived by that way from the sea. The sky was all a clear blue, except where a pale green and a faint blush of pink streaked the west. A large planet beamed clear and bright; and the air was so transparent that the very leaves on the trees might almost be counted. Yet could nothing be seen below for the gray mist which was rising, from moment to moment.

Fleming met them as they alighted; but he could not stay till he had seen to the other passengers. His wife was there. She had been a merry-hearted girl; and now, still so young, as to look as girlish as ever, she seemed even merrier than ever. She did not look strong, but she had hardly thrown off what she called “a little touch of the ague;” and she declared herself perfectly well when the wind was anywhere but in the wrong quarter. Allan wondered how the wind could go wrong. He had never heard of such a thing before. He had known the wind too high, when it did mischief among his father’s fruit trees; but it had never occurred to him that it was not free to come and go whence and whither it would, without blame or objection.

“Come—come home,” exclaimed Mrs. Fleming, “Never mind about your bags and boxes! My husband will take care of them. Let me show you the way home.”

She let go the hands of the young brothers, and loaded them, and then herself, with parcels, that they might not think they were going to lose everything, as she said; and then tripped on before to show the way. The way was down steps, from the highest of which two or three chimney-tops might be seen piercing the mist which hid everything else. Down, down, down went the party, by so many steps that little Moss began to totter under his bundle.

“How low this place lies!” observed the mother.

“Why, yes;” replied Mrs. Fleming. “And yet I don’t know. I believe it is rather that the railway runs high.”

“Yes, yes; that is it,” said Woodruffe. “What an embankment this is! If this is to shelter my garden to the north—”

“Yes, yes, it is. I knew you would like it,” exclaimed Mrs. Fleming. “I said you would be delighted. I only wish you could see your ground at once; but it seems rather foggy, and I suppose we must wait till the morning. Here we are at home.”

The travellers were rather surprised to see how very small a house this “home” was. Though called a cottage, it had not the look of one. It was of a red brick, dingy, though evidently new; and, to all appearance, it consisted of merely a room below, and one above. On walking round it, however, a sloping roof in two directions gave a hint of further accommodation.

When the whole party had entered, and Mrs. Fleming had kissed them all round, her glance at her mother asked, as plainly as any words, “Is not this a pleasant room?”

“A pretty room, indeed, my dear,” was the mother’s reply, “and as nicely furnished as one could wish.”

She did not say anything of the rust which her quick eye perceived on the fire-irons and the door-key, or of the damp which stained the walls just above the skirting-board. There was nothing amiss with the ceiling, or the higher parts of the wall,—so it might be an accident.

“But, my dear,” asked the mother, seeing how sleepy Moss looked, “Where are you going to put us all? If we crowd you out of all comfort, I shall be sorry we came so soon.”

As Mrs. Fleming led the way upstairs, she reminded her family of their agreement not to mind a little crowding for a time. If her mother thought there was not room for all the newly arrived in this chamber, they could fit out a corner for Allan in the place where she and her husband were to sleep.

“All of us in this room?” exclaimed Becky.

“Yes, Becky; why not? Here, you see, is a curtain between your bed and the large one; and your bed is large enough to let little Moss sleep with you. And here is a morsel of a bed for Allan in the other corner; and I have another curtain ready to shut it in.”

“But,” said Becky, who was going on to object. Her mother stopped her by a sign.

“Or,” continued Mrs. Fleming, “if you like to let Allan and his bed and curtain come down to our place, you will have plenty of room here; much more than my neighbors have, for the most part. How it will be when the new cottages are built, I don’t know. We think them too small for new houses; but, meantime, there are the Brookes sleeping seven in a room no bigger than this, and the Vines six in one much smaller.”

“How do they manage, now?” asked the mother. “In case of illness, say; and how do they wash and dress?”

“Ah! that is the worst part of it. I don’t think the boys wash themselves—what we should call washing—for weeks together; or at least only on Saturday nights. So they slip their clothes on in two minutes; and then their mother and sisters can get up. But there is the pump below for Allan, and he can wash as much as he pleases.”

It was not till the next day that Mrs. Woodruffe knew—and then it was Allan who told her—that the pump was actually in the very place where the Flemings slept,—close by their bed. The Flemings were, in truth, sleeping in an outhouse, where the floor was of brick, the swill-tub stood in one corner, the coals were heaped in another, and the light came in from a square hole high up, which had never till now been glazed. Plenty of air rushed in under the door, and yet some more between the tiles,—there being no plaster beneath them. As soon as Mrs. Woodruffe had been informed of this, and had stepped in, while her daughter’s back was turned, to make her own observations, she went out by herself for a walk,—so long a walk, that it was several hours before she reappeared, heated and somewhat depressed. She had roamed the country round, in search of lodgings; and finding none,—finding no occupier who really could possibly spare a room on any terms,—she had returned convinced that, serious as the expense would be, she and her family ought to settle themselves in the nearest town,—her husband going to his business daily by the third-class train, till a dwelling could be provided for them on the spot.

When she returned, the children were on the watch for her; and little Moss had strong hopes that she would not know him. He had a great cap of rushes on his head, with a heavy bulrush for a feather; he was stuck all over with water-flags and bulrushes, and carried a long osier wand, wherewith to flog all those who did not admire him enough in his new style of dress. The children were clamorous for their mother to come down, and see the nice places where they got these new playthings; and she would have gone, but that their father came up, and decreed it otherwise. She was heated and tired, he said; and he would not have her go till she was easy and comfortable enough to see things in the best light.

Her impression was that her husband was, more or less (and she did not know why), disappointed; but he did not say so. He would not hear of going off to the town, being sure that some place would turn up soon,—some place where they might put their heads at night; and the Flemings should be no losers by having their company by day. Their boarding all together, if the sleeping could but be managed, would be a help to the young people,—a help which it was pleasant to him, as a father, to be able to give them. He said nothing about the land that was not in praise of it. Its quality was excellent; or would be when it had good treatment. It would take some time and trouble to get it in order,—so much that it would never do to live at a distance from it. Besides, no trains that would suit him ran at the proper hours; so there was an end of it. They must all rough it a little for a time, and expect their reward afterwards.

There was nothing that Woodruffe was so hard to please in as the time when he should take his wife to see the ground. It was close at hand; yet he hindered her going in the morning, and again after their early dinner. He was anxious that she should not be prejudiced, or take a dislike at first; and in the morning, the fog was so thick that everything looked dank and dreary; and in the middle of the day, when a warm autumn sun had dissolved the mists, there certainly was a most disagreeable smell hanging about. It was not gone at sunset; but by that time Mrs. Woodruffe was impatient, and she appeared—Allan showing her the way—just when her husband was scraping his feet upon his spade, after a hard day of digging.

“There, now!” said he, good-humoredly, striking his spade into the ground, “Fleming said you would be down before we were ready for you; and here you are!—Yes, ready for you. There are some planks coming, to keep your feet out of the wet among all this clay.”

“And yours, too, I hope,” said the wife. “I don’t mind such wet, after rain, as you have been accustomed to; but to stand in a puddle like this is a very different thing.”

“Yes—so ’tis. But we’ll have the planks; and they will serve for running the wheelbarrow, too. It is too much for Allan, or any boy, to run the barrow in such a soil as this. We’ll have the planks first; and then we’ll drain, and drain, and get rare spring crops.”

“What have they given you this artificial pond for,” asked the wife, “if you must drain so much?”

“That is no pond. All the way along here, on both sides the railway, there is the mischief of these pits. They dig out the clay for bricks, and then leave the places—pits like this, some of them six feet deep. The railways have done a deal of good for the poor man, and will do a great deal more yet; but, at present, this one has left those pits.”

“I hope Moss will not fall into one. They are very dangerous,” declared the mother, looking about for the child.

“He is safe enough there, among the osiers,” said the father. “He has lost his heart outright to the osiers. However, I mean to drain and fill up this pit, when I find a good out-fall; and then we will have all high and dry, and safe for the children. I don’t care so much for the pit as for the ditches there. Don’t you notice the bad smell?”

“Yes, indeed, that struck me the first night.”

“I have been inquiring to-day, and I find there is one acre in twenty hereabouts occupied with foul ditches like that. And then the overflow from them and the pits, spoils many an acre more. There is a stretch of water-flags and bulrushes, and nasty coarse grass and rushes, nothing but a swamp, where the ground is naturally as good as this; and, look here! Fleming was rather out, I tell him, when he wrote that I might graze a pony on the pasture below, whenever I have a market-cart. I ask him if he expects me to water it here.”

So saying, Woodruffe led the way to one of the ditches which, instead of fences, bounded his land; and, moving the mass of weed with a stick, showed the water beneath, covered with a whitish bubbling scum, the smell of which was insufferable.

“There is plenty of manure there,” said Woodruffe; “that is the only thing that can be said for it. We’ll make manure of it, and sweep out the ditch, and deepen it, and narrow it, and not use up so many feet of good ground for a ditch that does nothing but poison us. A fence is better than a ditch any day. I’ll have a fence, and still save ten feet of ground, the whole way down.”

“There is a great deal to do here,” observed the wife.

“And good reward when it is done,” Woodruffe replied. “If I can fall in with a stout laborer, he and Allan and I can get our spring crops prepared for; and I expect they will prove the goodness of the soil. There is Fleming. Supper is ready, I suppose.”

The children were called, but both were so wet and dirty that it took twice as long as usual to make them fit to sit at table; and apologies were made for keeping supper waiting. The grave half-hour before Moss’s bed-time was occupied with the most solemn piece of instruction he had ever had in his life. His father carried him up to the railway, and made him understand the danger of playing there. He was never to play there. His father would go up with him once a day, and let him see a train pass; and this was the only time he was ever to mount the steps, except by express leave. Moss was put to bed in silence, with his father’s deep, grave voice, sounding in his ears.

“He will not forget it,” declared his father. “He will give us no trouble about the railway. The next thing is the pit. Allan, I expect you to see that he does not fall into the pit. In time, we shall teach him to take care of himself; but you must remember, meanwhile, that the pit is six feet deep—deeper than I am high; and that the edge is the same clay that you slipped on so often this morning.”

“Yes, father,” said Allan, looking as grave as if power of life and death were in his hands.

III.

One fine morning in the next spring, there was more stir and cheerfulness about the Woodruffes’ dwelling than there had been of late. The winter had been somewhat dreary; and now the spring was anxious; for Woodruffe’s business was not, as yet, doing very well. His hope, when he bought his pony and cart, was to dispatch by railway to the town the best of his produce, and sell the commoner part in the country neighborhood, sending his cart round within the reach of a few miles. As it turned out, he had nothing yet to send to the town, and his agent there was vexed and displeased. No radishes, onions, early salads, or rhubarb were ready, and it would be some time yet before they were.

“I am sure I have done everything I could,” said Woodruffe to Fleming, as they both lent a hand to put the pony into the cart. “Nobody can say that I have not made drains enough, or that they are not deep enough; yet the frost has taken such a hold that one would think we were living in the north of Scotland, instead of in Staffordshire.”

“It has not been a severe season either,” observed Fleming.

“There’s the vexation,” replied Woodruffe. “If it had been a season which set us at defiance, and made all sufferers alike, one must just submit to a loss, and go on again, like one’s neighbors. But, you see, I am cut out, as my agent says, from the market. Everybody else has spring vegetables there, as usual. It is no use telling him that I never failed before. But I know what it is. It is yonder great ditch that does the mischief.”

“Why, we have nothing to do with that.”

“That is the very reason. If it was mine or yours, do you think I should not have taken it in hand long ago? All my draining goes for little while that shallow ditch keeps my ground a continual sop. It is all uneven along the bottom;—not the same depth for three feet together anywhere, and not deep enough by two feet in any part. So there it is, choked up and putrid; and, after an hour or two of rain, my garden gets such a soaking that the next frost is destruction.”

“I will speak about it again,” said Fleming. “We must have it set right before next winter.”

“I think we have seen enough of the uselessness of speaking,” replied Woodruffe, gloomily. “If we tease the gentry any more, they may punish you for it. I would show them my mind by being off,—throwing up my bargain at all costs, if I had not put so much into the ground that I have nothing left to move away with.”

“Don’t be afraid for me,” said Fleming, cheerfully. “It was chiefly my doing that you came here, and I must try my utmost to obtain fair conditions for you. We must remember that the benefit of your outlay has all to come.”

“Yes; I can’t say we have got much of it yet.”

“By next winter,” continued Fleming, “your privet hedges and screens will have grown up into some use against the frost; and your own drainage——. Come, come, Allan, my boy! be off! It is getting late.”

Allan seemed to be idling, re-arranging his bunches of small radishes, and little bundles of rhubarb, in their clean baskets, and improving the stick with which he was to drive; but he pleaded that he was waiting for Moss, and for the parcel which his mother was getting ready for Becky.

“Ah I my poor little girl!” said Woodruffe. “Give my love to her, and tell her it will be a happy day when we can send for her to come home again. Be sure you observe particularly, to tell us how she looks; and, mind, if she fancies anything in the cart,—any radishes, or whatever else, because it comes out of our garden, be sure you give it her. I wish I was going myself with the cart, for the sake of seeing Becky; but I must go to work. Here have I been all the while, waiting to see you off. Ah! here they come! you may always have notice now of who is coming by that child’s crying.”

“O, father! not always!” exclaimed Allan.

“Far too often, I’m sure. I never knew a child grow so fractious. I am saying, my dear,” to his wife, who now appeared with her parcel, and Moss in his best hat, “that boy is the most fractious child we ever had; and he is getting too old for that to begin now. How can you spoil him so?”

“I am not aware,” said Mrs. Woodruffe, her eyes filling with tears, “that I treat him differently from the rest; but the child is not well. His chilblains tease him terribly, and I wish there may be nothing worse.”

“Warm weather will soon cure the chilblains, and then I hope we shall see an end of the fretting.—Now, leave off crying this minute, Moss, or you don’t go. You don’t see me cry with my rheumatism, and that is worse than chilblains, I can tell you.”

Moss tried to stifle his sobs, while his mother put more straw into the cart for him, and cautioned Allan to be careful of him, for it really seemed as if the child was tender all over. Allan seemed to succeed best as comforter. He gave Moss the stick to wield, and showed him how to make believe to whip the pony, so that before they turned the corner, Moss was wholly engrossed with what he called driving.

“Yes, yes,” said Woodruffe, as he turned away to go to the garden, “Allan is the one to manage, him. He can take as good care of him as any woman without spoiling him!”

Mrs. Woodruffe submitted to this in silence; but with the feeling that she did not deserve it.

Becky had had no notice of this visit from her brothers; but no such visit could take her by surprise; for she was thinking of her family all day long, every day, and fancying she should see them whichever way she turned. It was not her natural destination to be a servant in a farm-house; she had never expected it,—never been prepared for it. She was as willing to work as any girl could be; and her help in the gardening was beyond what most women are capable of; but it was a bitter thing to her to go among strangers, and toil for them, when she knew that she was wanted at home by father and mother, and brothers, and just at present by her sister too; for Mrs. Fleming’s confinement was to happen this spring. The reason why Becky was not at home while so much wanted there was, that there really was no accommodation for her. The plan of sleeping all huddled together as they were at first would not do. The girl herself could not endure it; and her parents felt that she must be got out at any sacrifice. They had inquired diligently till they found a place for her in a farm-house, where the good wife promised protection, and care, and kindness; and fulfilled her promise to the best of her power.

“I hope they do well by you here, Becky,” asked Allan, when the surprise caused by his driving up with a dash had subsided, and everybody had retired, to leave Becky with her brothers for the few minutes they could stay. “I hope they are kind to you here.”

“O, yes,—very kind. And I am sure you ought to say so to father and mother.”

Becky had jumped into the cart, and had her arms round Moss, and her head on his shoulder. Raising her head, and with her eyes filling as she spoke, she inquired anxiously how the new cottages went on, and when father and mother were to have a home of their own again. She owned, but did not wish her father and mother to hear of it, that she did not like being among such rough people as the farm servants. She did not like some of the behavior that she saw; and, still less, such talk as she was obliged to overhear. When would a cottage be ready for them?

“Why, the new cottages would soon be getting on now,” Allan said; but he didn’t know, nobody fancied the look of them. He saw them just after the foundations were laid; and the enclosed parts were like a clay-puddle. He did not see how they were ever to be improved; for the curse of wet seemed to be on them, as upon everything about the Station. Fleming’s cottage was the best he had seen, after all, if only it was twice as large. If anything could be done to make the new cottages what cottages should be, it would be done: for everybody agreed that the railway gentlemen desired to do the best for their people, and to set an example in that respect; but it was beyond anybody’s power to make wet clay as healthy as warm gravel. Unless they could go to work first to dry the soil, it seemed a hopeless sort of affair.

“But, I say, Becky,” pursued Allan, “you know about my garden—that father gave me a garden of my own.”

Becky’s head was turned quite away; and she did not look round, when she replied,

“Yes; I remember. How does your garden get on?”

There was something in her voice which made her brother lean over and look into her face; and, as he expected, tears were running down her cheeks.

“There now!” said he, whipping the back of the cart with his stick; “something must be done, if you can’t get on here.”

“O! I can get on. Be sure you don’t tell mother that I can’t get on, or anything about it.”

“You look healthy, to be sure.”

“To be sure I am. Don’t say any more about it. Tell me about your garden.”

“Well: I am trying what I can make of it, after I have done working with father. But it takes a long time to bring it round.”

“What! is the wet there, too?”

“Lord, yes! The wet was beyond everything at first. I could not leave the spade in the ground ten minutes, if father called me, but the water was standing in the hole when I went back again. It is not so bad now, since I made a drain to join upon father’s principal one; and father gave me some sand, and plenty of manure; but it seems to us that manure does little good. It won’t sink in when the ground is so wet.”

“Well, there will be the summer next, and that will dry up your garden.”

“Yes. People say the smells are dreadful in hot weather, though. But we seem to get used to that. I thought it sickly work, just after we came, going down to get osiers, and digging near the big ditch that is our plague now: but somehow, it does not strike me now as it did then, though Fleming says it is getting worse every warm day. But come—I must be off. What will you help yourself to? And don’t forget your parcel.”

Becky’s great anxiety was to know when her brothers would come again. O! very often, she was assured—oftener and oftener as the vegetables came forward; whenever there were either too many or too few to send to the town by rail.

After Becky had jumped down, the farmer and one of the men were seen to be contemplating the pony.

“What have you been giving your pony lately?” asked the farmer of Allan. “I ask as a friend, having some experience of this part of the country. Have you been letting him graze?”

“Yes, in the bit of meadow that we have leave for. There is a good deal of grass there, now. He has been grazing there these three weeks.”

“On the meadow where the osier beds are? Ay! I knew it by the look of him. Tell your father that if he does not take care, his pony will have the staggers in no time. An acquaintance of mine grazed some cattle there once; and in a week or two, they were all feverish, so that the butcher refused them on any terms; and I have seen more than one horse in the staggers, after grazing in marshes of that sort.”

“There is fine thick grass there, and plenty of it,” said Allan, who did not like that anybody but themselves should criticise their new place and plans.

“Ay, ay; I know,” replied the farmer. “But if you try to make hay of that grass, you’ll be surprised to find how long it takes to make, and how like wool it comes out at last. It is a coarse grass, with no strength in it; and it must be a stronger beast than this that will bear feeding on it. Just do you tell your father what I say, that’s all; and then he can do as he pleases; but I would take a different way with that pony, without loss of time, if it was mine.”

Allan did not much like taking this sort of message to his father, who was not altogether so easy to please as he used to be. If anything vexed him ever so little, he always began to complain of his rheumatism—and he now complained of his rheumatism many times in a day. It was managed, however, by tacking a little piece of amusement and pride upon it. Moss was taught, all the way as they went home, after selling their vegetables, how much everything sold for; and he was to deliver the money to his father, and go through his lesson as gravely as any big man. It succeeded very well. Everybody laughed. Woodruffe called the child his little man-of-business; gave him a penny out of the money he brought; and when he found that the child did not like jumping as he used to do, carried him up to the railway to listen for the whistle, and see the afternoon train come up, and stop a minute, and go on again.

IV.

Fleming did what he could to find fair play for his father-in-law. He spoke to one and another—to the officers of the railway, and to the owners of neighboring plots of ground, about the bad drainage, which was injuring everybody; but he could not learn that anything was likely to be done. The ditch—the great evil of all—had always been there, he was told, and people never used to complain of it. When Fleming pointed out that it was at first a comparatively deep ditch, and that it grew shallower every year from the accumulations formed by its uneven bottom, there were some who admitted that it might be as well to clean it out; yet nobody set about it. And it was truly a more difficult affair now than it would have been at an earlier time. If the ditch was shallower, it was much wider. It had once been twelve feet wide, and it was now eighteen. When any drain had been flowing into it, or after a rainy day, the contents spread through and over the soil on each side, and softened it, and then the next time any horse or cow came to drink, the whole bank was made a perfect bog; for the poor animals, however thirsty, tried twenty places to find water that they could drink before going away in despair. Such was the bar in the way of poor Woodruffe’s success with his ground. Before the end of summer his patience was nearly worn out. During a showery and gleamy May and a pleasant June, he had gone on as prosperously as he could expect under the circumstances; and he confidently anticipated that a seasonable July and August would set him up. But he had had no previous experience of the peculiarities of ill-drained land; and the hot July and August, from which he hoped so much, did him terrible mischief. The drought which would have merely dried and pulverized a well-drained soil, leaving it free to profit much by small waterings, baked the overcharged soil of Woodruffe’s garden into hard hot masses of clay, amidst which his produce died off faster and faster every day, even though he and all his family wore out their strength with constant watering. He did hope, he said, that he should have been spared drought at least; but it seemed as if he was to have every plague in turn; and the drought seemed, at the time, to be the worst of all.

One day Fleming saw a welcome face in one of the carriages; Mr. Nelson, a director of the railway, who was looking along the line to see how matters went. Though Mr. Nelson was not exactly the one, of all the directors, whom Fleming would have chosen to appeal to, he saw that the opportunity must not be lost; and he entreated him to alight, and stay for the next train.

“Eh! what!” said Mr. Nelson; “what can you want with us here? A station like this! Why, one has to put on spectacles to see it!”

“If you would come down, sir, I should be glad to show you....”

“Well; I suppose I must.”

As they were standing on the little platform, and the train was growing smaller in the distance, Fleming proceeded to business. He told of the serious complaints that were made for a distance of a few miles on either hand, of the clay pits left by the railway brickmakers, to fill with stagnant waters.

“Pho! pho! Is that what you want to say?” replied Mr. Nelson. “You need not have stopped me just to tell me that. We hear of those pits all along the line. We are sick of hearing of them.”

“That does not mend the matter in this place,” observed Fleming. “I speak freely, sir, but I think it my duty to say that something must be done. I heard a few days ago, more than the people hereabouts know,—much more than I shall tell them—of the fever that has settled on particular points of our line; and I now assure you, sir, that if the fever once gets a hold in this place, I believe it may carry us all off before anything can be done. Sir, there is not one of us within half a mile of the station that has a wholesome dwelling.”

“Pho! pho! you are a croaker,” declared Mr. Nelson. “Never saw such a dismal fellow! Why, you will die of fright, if ever you die of anything.”

“Then, sir, will you have the goodness to walk round with me, and see for yourself what you think of things. It is not only for myself and my family that I speak. In an evil day I induced my wife’s family to settle here, and....”

“Ay! that is a nice garden,” observed Mr. Nelson, as Fleming pointed to Woodruffe’s land. “You are a croaker, Fleming. I declare I think the place is much improved since I saw it last. People would not come and settle here if the place was like what you say.”

Instead of arguing the matter, Fleming led the way down the long flight of steps. He was aware that leading the gentleman among bad smells and over shoes in a foul bog would have more effect than any argument was ever known to have on his contradictious spirit.

“You should have seen worse things than these, and then you would not be so discontented,” observed Mr. Nelson, striking his stick upon the hard-baked soil, all intersected with cracks. “I have seen such a soil as this in Spain, some days after a battle, when there were scores of fingers and toes sticking up out of the cracks. What would you say to that?—eh?”

“We may have a chance of seeing that here,” replied Fleming; “if the plague comes, and comes too fast for the coffin-makers,—a thing which has happened more than once in England, I believe.”

Mr. Nelson stopped to laugh; but he certainly attended more to business as he went on; and Fleming, who knew something of his ways, had hopes that if he could only keep his own temper, this visit of the director might not be without good results.

In passing through Woodruffe’s garden, very nice management was necessary. Woodruffe was at work there, charged with ire against railway directors and landed proprietors, whom, amidst the pangs of his rheumatism, he regarded as the poisoners of his land and the bane of his fortunes; while, on the other hand, Mr. Nelson, who had certainly never been a market gardener, criticized and ridiculed everything that met his eye. What was the use of such a tool-house as that?—big enough for a house for them all. What was the use of such low fences?—of such high screens?—of making the walks so wide?—sheer waste?—of making the beds so long one way, and so narrow another?—of planting or sowing this and that?—things that nobody wanted. Woodruffe had pushed back his hat in preparation for a defiant reply, when Fleming caught his eye, and, by a good-tempered smile, conveyed to him that they had an oddity to deal with. Allan, who had begun by listening reverently, was now looking from one to another in great perplexity.

“What is that boy here for, staring like a dunce? Why don’t you send him to school? You neglect a parent’s duty if you don’t send him to school.”

Woodruffe answered by a smile of contempt, walked away, and went to work at a distance.

“That boy is very well taught,” Fleming said, quietly. “He is a great reader, and will soon be fit to keep his father’s accounts.”

“What does he stare in that manner for, then? I took him for a dunce.”

“He is not accustomed to hear his father called in question, either as a gardener or a parent.”

“Pho! pho! I might as well have waited, though, till he was out of hearing. Well, is this all you have to show me? I think you make a great fuss about nothing.”

“Will you walk this way?” said Fleming, turning down towards the osier beds, without any compassion for the gentleman’s boots or olfactory nerves. For a long while Mr. Nelson affected to admire the reed, and water-flags, and marsh-blossoms, declared the decayed vegetation to be peat soil, very fine peat, which the ladies would be glad of for their heaths in the flower-garden,—and thought there must be good fowling here in winter. Fleming quietly turned over the so-called peat with a stick, letting it be seen that it was a mere dung-heap of decayed rushes, and wished Mr. Nelson would come in the fowling season, and see what the place was like.

“The children are merry enough, however,” observed the gentleman. “They can laugh here, much as in other places. I advise you to take a lesson from them, Fleming. Now, don’t you teach them to croak.”

The laughter sounded from the direction of the old brick-ground; and thither they now turned. Two little boys were on the brink of a pit, so intent on watching a rat in the water and on pelting it with stones, that they did not see that anybody was coming to disturb them. In answer to Mr. Nelson’s question, whether they were vagrants, and why vagrants were permitted there, Fleming answered that the younger one—the pale-faced one—was his little brother-in-law; the other—

“Ay, now, you will be telling me next that the pale face is the fault of this place.”

“It certainly is,” said Fleming. “That child was chubby enough when he came.”

“Pho, pho! a puny little wretch as ever I saw—puny from its birth, I have no doubt of it. And who is the other—a gypsy?”

“He looks like it,” replied Fleming. On being questioned, Moss told that the boy lived near, and he had often played with him lately. Yes, he lived near, just beyond those trees; not in a house, only a sort of house the people had made for themselves. Mr. Nelson liked to lecture vagrants, even more than other people; so Moss was required to show the way, and his dark-skinned playfellow was not allowed to skulk behind.

Moss led his party on, over the tufty hay-colored grass, skipping from bunch to bunch of rushes, round the osier-beds, and at last straight through a clump of elders, behind whose screen now appeared the house, as Moss had called it, which the gypsies had made for themselves. It was the tilt of a wagon, serving as a tent. Nobody was visible but a woman, crouching under the shadow of the tent, to screen from the sun that which was lying across her lap.

“What is that that she’s nursing? Lord bless me! Can that be a child?” exclaimed Mr. Nelson.

“A child in the fever,” replied Fleming.

“Lord bless me!—to see legs and arms hang down like that!” exclaimed the gentleman; and he forthwith gave the woman a lecture on her method of nursing—scolded her for letting the child get a fever—for not putting it to bed—for not getting a doctor to it—for being a gypsy, and living under an alder clump. He then proceeded to inquire whether she had anybody else in the tent, where her husband was, whether he lived by thieving, how they would all like being transported, whether she did not think her children would all be hanged, and so on. At first, the woman tried a facetious and wheedling tone, then a whimpering one, and, finally, a scolding one. The last answered well. Mr. Nelson found that a man, to say nothing of a gentleman, has no chance with a woman with a sore heart in her breast, and a sick child in her lap, when once he has driven her to her weapon of the tongue. He said afterwards, that he had once gone to Billingsgate, on purpose to set two fisherwomen quarrelling, that he might see what it was like. The scene had fulfilled all his expectations; but he now declared that it could not compare with this exhibition behind the alders. He stood a long while, first trying to overpower the woman’s voice; and, when that seemed hopeless, poking about among the rushes with his stick, and finally, staring in the woman’s face, in a mood between consternation and amusement;—thus he stood, waiting till the torrent should intermit; but there was no sign of intermission; and when the sick child began to move and rouse itself, and look at the strangers, as if braced by the vigor of its mother’s tongue, the prospect of an end seemed farther off than ever. Mr. Nelson shrugged his shoulders, signed to his companions, and walked away through the alders. The woman was not silent because they were out of sight. Her voice waxed shriller as it followed them, and died away only in the distance. Moss was grasping Fleming’s hand with all his might when Mr. Nelson spoke to him, and shook his stick at him, asking him how he came to play with such people, and saying that if ever he heard him learning to scold like that woman, he would beat him with that stick; so Moss vowed he never would.

When the train was in sight by which Mr. Nelson was to depart, he turned to Fleming, with the most careless air imaginable, saying, “Have you any medicine in your house?—any bark?”

“Not any. But I will send for some.”

“Ay, do. Or,—no—I will send you some. See if you can’t get these people housed somewhere, so that they may not sleep in the swamp. I don’t mean in any of your houses, but in a barn, or some such place. If the physic comes before the doctor, get somebody to dose the child. And don’t fancy you are all going to die of the fever. That is the way to make yourselves ill; and it is all nonsense, too, I dare say.”

“Do you like that gentleman?” asked Moss, sapiently, when the train was whirling Mr. Nelson out of sight. “Because I don’t—not at all.”

“I believe he is kinder than he means, Moss. He need not be so rough; but I know he does kind things sometimes.”

“But, do you like him?”

“No, I can’t say I do.”

Before many hours were over, Fleming was sorry that he had admitted this, even to himself; and for many days after he was occasionally heard telling Moss what a good gentleman Mr. Nelson was, for all his roughness of manners. With the utmost speed, before it would have been thought possible, arrived a surgeon from the next town, with medicines, and the news that he was to come every day while there was any fear of fever. The gypsies were to have been cared for; but they were gone. The marks of their fire and a few stray feathers which showed that a fowl had been plucked, alone told where they had encamped. A neighbor, who loved her poultry yard, was heard to say that the sick child would not die for want of chicken broth, she would be bound; and the nearest farmer asked if they had left any potato-peels and turnip tops for his pig. He thought that was the least they could do after making their famous gypsy stew (a capital dish, it was said) from his vegetables. They were gone; and if they had not left fever behind, they might be forgiven, for the sake of the benefit of taking themselves off. After the search for the gypsies was over, there was still an unusual stir about the place. One and another stranger appeared and examined the low grounds, and sent for one and another of the neighboring proprietors, whether farmer, or builder, or gardener, or laborer; for every one who owned or rented a yard of land on the borders of the great ditch, or anywhere near the clay-pits or osier-beds.

It was the opinion of the few residents near the Station that something would be done to improve the place before another year; and everybody said that it must be Mr. Nelson’s doings, and that it was a thousand pities that he did not come earlier, before the fever had crept thus far along the line.

V.

For some months past, Becky had believed without a doubt, that the day of her return home would be the very happiest day of her life. She was too young to know yet that it is not for us to settle which of our days shall be happy ones, nor what events shall yield us joy. The promise had not been kept that she should return when her father and mother removed into the new cottage. She had been told that there really was not, even now, decent room for them all; and that they must at least wait till the hot weather was completely over before they crowded the chamber, as they had hitherto done. And then, when autumn came on, and the creeping mists from the low grounds hung round the place from sunset till after breakfast the next day, the mother delayed sending for her daughter, unwilling that she should lose the look of health which she alone now, of all the family, exhibited. Fleming and his wife and babe prospered better than the others. The young man’s business lay on the high ground, at the top of the embankment. He was there all day while Mr. Woodruffe and Allan were below, among the ditches and the late and early fogs. Mrs. Fleming was young and strong, full of spirit and happiness; and so far fortified against the attacks of disease, as a merry heart strengthens nerve and bone and muscle, and invigorates all the vital powers. In regard to her family, her father’s hopeful spirit seemed to have passed into her. While he was becoming permanently discouraged, she was always assured that everything would come right next year. The time had arrived for her power of hope to be tested to the utmost. One day this autumn, she admitted that Becky must be sent for. She did not forget, however, to charge Allan to be cheerful, and make the best of things, and not frighten Becky by the way.

It was now the end of October. Some of the days were balmy elsewhere—the afternoons ruddy; the leaves crisp beneath the tread; the squirrel busy after the nuts in the wood; the pheasants splendid among the dry ferns in the brake, the sportsman warm and thirsty in his exploring among the stubble. In the evenings the dwellers in country houses called one another out upon the grass, to see how bright the stars were, and how softly the moonlight slept upon the woods. While it was thus in one place, in another, and not far off, all was dank, dim, dreary and unwholesome; with but little sun, and no moon or stars; all chill, and no glow; no stray perfumes, the last of the year, but sickly scents coming on the steam from below. Thus it was about Fleming’s house, this latter end of October, when he saw but little of his wife, because she was nursing her mother in the fever, and when he tried to amuse himself with his young baby at meal-times (awkward nurse as he was) to relieve his wife of the charge for the little time he could be at home. When the baby cried, and when he saw his Abby look wearied, he did wish, now and then, that Becky was at home; but he was patient, and helpful, and as cheerful as he could be, till the day which settled the matter. On that morning he felt strangely weak, barely able to mount the steps to the station. During the morning, several people told him he looked ill; and one person did more. The porter sent a message to the next large Station that somebody must be sent immediately to fill Fleming’s place, in case of his being too ill to work. Somebody came; and before that, Fleming was in bed—certainly down in the fever. His wife was now wanted at home; and Becky must come to her mother.

Though Becky asked questions all the way home, and Allan answered them as truthfully as he knew how, she was not prepared for what she found—her father aged and bent, always in pain, more or less, and far less furnished with plans and hopes than she had ever known him; Moss, fretful and sickly, and her mother unable to turn herself in her bed. Nobody mentioned death. The surgeon who came daily, and told Becky exactly what to do, said nothing of anybody dying of the fever, while Woodruffe was continually talking of things that were to be done when his wife got well again. It was sad, and sometimes alarming, to hear the strange things that Mrs. Woodruffe said in the evenings when she was delirious; but if Abby stepped in at such times, she did not think much of it, did not look upon it as any sign of danger; and was only thankful that her husband had no delirium. His head was always clear, she said, though he was very weak. Becky never doubted, after this, that her mother was the most severely ill of the two; and she was thunderstruck when she heard one morning the surgeon’s answers to her father’s questions about Fleming. He certainly considered it a bad case; he would not say that he could not get through; but he must say it was contrary to his expectation. When Becky saw her father’s face as he turned away and went out, she believed his heart was broken.

“But I thought,” said she to the surgeon, “I thought my mother was most ill of the two.”

“I don’t know that,” was the reply, “but she is very ill. We are doing the best we can. You are, I am sure,” he said, kindly; “and we must hope on, and do our best till a change comes. The wisest of us do not know what changes may come. But I could not keep your father in ignorance of what may happen in the other house.”

No appearances alarmed Abby. Because there was no delirium, she apprehended no danger. Even when the fatal twitchings came, the arm twitching as it lay upon the coverlid, she did not know it was a symptom of anything. As she nursed her husband perfectly well, and could not have been made more prudent and watchful by any warning, she had no warning. Her cheerfulness was encouraged, for her infant’s sake, as well as for her husband’s and her own. Some thought that her husband knew his own case. A word or two,—now a gesture, and now a look,—persuaded the surgeon and Woodruffe that he was aware that he was going. His small affairs were always kept settled; he had probably no directions to give; and his tenderness for his wife showed itself in his enjoying her cheerfulness to the last. When, as soon as it was light, one December morning, Moss was sent to ask if Abby could possibly come for a few minutes, because mother was worse, he found his sister alone, looking at the floor, her hands on her lap, though her baby was fidgetting in its cradle. Fleming’s face was covered, and he lay so still that Moss, who had never seen death, felt sure that all was over. The boy hardly knew what to do; and his sister seemed not to hear what he said. The thought of his mother,—that Abby’s going might help or save her,—moved him to act. He kissed Abby, and said she must please go to mother; and he took the baby out of the cradle, and wrapped it up, and put it into its mother’s arms; and fetched Abby’s bonnet, and took her cloak down from its peg, and opened the door for her, saying, that he would stay and take care of everything. His sister went without a word; and, as soon as he had closed the door behind her, Moss sank down on his knees before the chair where she had been sitting, and hid his face there till some one came for him,—to see his mother once more before she died.

As the two coffins were carried out, to be conveyed to the churchyard together, Mr. Nelson, who had often been backward and forward during the last six weeks, observed to the surgeon that the death of such a man as Fleming was a dreadful loss.

“It is that sort of men that the fever cuts off,” said the surgeon. “The strong man, in the prime of life, at his best period, one may say, for himself and for society, is taken away,—leaving wife and child helpless and forlorn. That is the ravage that the fever makes.”

“Well; would not people tell you that it is our duty to submit?” asked Mr. Nelson, who could not help showing some emotion by voice and countenance.

“Submit!” said the surgeon. “That depends on what the people mean who use the word. If you or I were ill of the fever, we must resign ourselves, as cheerfully as we could. But if you ask me whether we should submit to see more of our neighbors cut off by fever as these have been, I can only ask in return, whose doing it is that they are living in a swamp, and whether that is to go on? Who dug the clay pits? Who let that ditch run abroad, and make a filthy bog? Are you going to charge that upon Providence and talk of submitting to the consequences? If so, that is not my religion.”

“No, no. There is no religion in that,” replied Mr. Nelson, for once agreeing in what was said to him. “It must be looked to.”

“It must,” said the surgeon, as decidedly as if he had been a railway director, or king and parliament in one.

VI.

“I wonder whether there is a more forlorn family in England than we are now,” said Woodruffe, as he sat among his children, a few hours after the funeral.

His children were glad to hear him speak, however gloomy might be his tone. His silence had been so terrible that nothing that he could say could so weigh upon their hearts. His words, however, brought out his widowed daughter’s tears again. She was sewing—her infant lying in her lap. As her tears fell upon its face, it moved and cried. Becky came and took it up, and spoke cheerfully to it. The cheerfulness seemed to be the worst of all. Poor Abby laid her forehead to the back of her chair, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

“Ay, Abby,” said her father, “your heart is breaking, and mine too. You and I can go to our rest, like those that have gone before us; but I have to think of what will become of these young things.”

“Yes, father,” said Becky gently, but with a tone of remonstrance, “you must endeavor to live, and not make up your mind to dying, because life has grown heavy and sad.”

“My dear, I am ill—very ill. It is not merely that life is grown intolerable to me. I am sure I could not live long in such misery of mind; but I am breaking up fast.”

The young people looked at each other in dismay. There was something worse than the grief conveyed by their father’s words in the hopeless daring—the despair—of his tone when he ventured to say that life was unendurable.

Becky had the child on one arm; with the other hand she took down her father’s plaid from its peg, and put it round his rheumatic shoulders, whispering in his ear a few words about desiring that God’s will should be done.

“My dear,” he replied, “it was I who taught you that lesson when you were a child on my knee, and it would be strange if I forgot it when I want so much any comfort that I can get. But I don’t believe (and if you ask the clergyman, he will tell you that he does not believe) that it is God’s will that we, or any other people, should be thrust into a swamp like this, scarcely fit for the rats and the frogs to live in. It is man’s doing, not God’s, that the fever makes such havoc as it has made with us. The fever does not lay waste healthy places.”

“Then why are we here?” Allan ventured to say. “Father, let us go.”

“Go! I wonder how or where! I can’t go, or let any of you go. I have not a pound in the world to spend in moving, or in finding new employment. And if I had, who would employ me? Who would not laugh at a crippled old man asking for work and wages?”

“Then, father, we must see what we can do here, and you must not forbid us to say ‘God’s will be done!’ If we cannot go away, it must be His will that we should stay and have as much hope and courage as we can.”

Woodruffe threw himself back in his chair. It was too much to expect that he would immediately rally; but he let the young people confer, and plan, and cheer each other.

The first thing to be done, they agreed, was to move hither, whenever the dismal rain would permit it, all Abby’s furniture that could not be disposed of to her husband’s successors. It would fit up the lower room. And Allan and Becky settled how the things could stand so as to make it at once a bed-room and sitting-room. If, as Abby had said, she meant to try to get some scholars, and keep a little school, room must be left to seat the children.

“Keep a school?” exclaimed Woodruffe, looking round at Abby.

“Yes, father,” said Abby, raising her head. “That seems to be a thing that I can do; and it will be good for me to have something to do. Becky is the stoutest of us all, and....”

“I wonder how long that will last,” groaned the father.

“I am quite stout now,” said Becky; “and I am the one to help Allan with the garden. Allan and I will work under your direction, father, while your rheumatism lasts; and....”

“And what am I to do?” asked Moss, pushing himself in.

“You shall fetch and carry the tools,” said Becky; “that is, when the weather is fine, and when your chilblains are not very bad. And you shall be bird-boy when the sowing season comes on.”

“And we are going to put up a pent-house for you, in one corner, you know, Moss,” said his brother. “And we will make it so that there shall be room for a fire in it, where father and you may warm yourselves, and always have dry shoes ready.”

“I wonder what our shoe leather will have cost us by the time the spring comes,” observed Woodruffe. “There is not a place where we ever have to take the cart or the barrow that is not all mire and ruts; not a path in the whole garden that I call a decent one. Our shoes are all pulled to pieces; while the frost, or the fog, or something or other, prevents our getting any real work done. The waste is dreadful. Nothing should have made me take a garden where none but summer crops are to be had, if I could have foreseen such a thing. I never saw such a thing before,—never—as market-gardening without winter and spring crops. Never heard of such a thing!”

Becky glanced towards Allan, to see if he had nothing to propose. If they could neither mend the place nor leave it, it did seem a hard case. Allan was looking into the fire, musing. When Moss announced that the rain was over, Allan started, and said he must be fetching some of Abby’s things down, if it was fair. Becky really meant to help him; but she also wanted opportunity for consultation, as to whether it could really be God’s will that they should neither be able to mend their condition nor to escape from it. As they mounted the long flight of steps, they saw Mr. Nelson issue from the Station, looking about him to ascertain if the rain was over, and take his stand on the embankment, followed by a gentleman who had a roll of paper in his hand. As they stood, the one was seen to point with his stick, and the other with his roll of paper, this way and that. Allan set off in that direction, saying to his sister, as he went,

“Don’t you come. That gentleman is so rude, he will make you cry. Yes, I must go, and I won’t get angry; I won’t indeed. He may find as much fault as he pleases; I must show him how the water is standing in our furrows.”

“Hallo! what do you want here?” was Mr. Nelson’s greeting, when, after a minute or two, he saw Allan looking and listening. “What business have you here, hearkening to what we are saying?”

“I wanted to know whether anything is going to be done below there. I thought, if you wished it, I could tell you something about it.”

“You! what, a dainty little fellow like you?—a fellow that wears his Sunday clothes on a Tuesday, and a rainy Tuesday too! You must get working clothes and work.”

“I shall work to-morrow, Sir. My mother and my brother-in-law were buried to-day.”

“Lord bless me! You should have told me that. How should I know that unless you told me?” He proceeded in a much gentler tone, however, merely remonstrating with Allan for letting the wet stand in the furrows, in such a way as would spoil any garden. Allan had a good ally, all the while, in the stranger, who seemed to understand everything before it was explained. The gentleman was, in fact, an agricultural surveyor—one who could tell, when looking abroad from a height, what was swamp and what meadow; where there was a clean drain, and where an uneven ditch; where the soil was likely to be watered, and where flooded by the winter rains; where genially warmed, and where fatally baked by the summer’s sun. He had seen, before Allan pointed it out, how the great ditch cut across between the cultivated grounds and the little river into which those grounds should be drained; but he could not know, till told by Allan, who were the proprietors and occupiers of the parcels of land lying on either side the ditch. Mr. Nelson knew little or nothing under this head, though he contradicted the lad every minute; was sure such an one did not live here, nor another there; told him he was confusing Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown; did not believe a word of Mr. Taylor having bought yonder meadow, or Mrs. Scott now renting that field. All the while, the surveyor went on setting down the names as Allan told them; and then observed that they were not so many but that they might combine, if they would, to drain their properties, if they could be relieved of the obstruction of the ditch—if the surveyor of highways would see that the ditch were taken in hand. Mr. Nelson pronounced that there should be no difficulty about the ditch, if the rest could be managed; and then, after a few whispered words between the gentlemen, Allan was asked first, whether he was sure that he knew where every person lived whose name was down in the surveyor’s book; and next, whether he would act as guide to-morrow. For a moment he thought he should be wanted to move Abby’s things; but, remembering the vast importance of the plan which seemed now to be fairly growing under his eye, he replied that he would go; he should be happy to make it his day’s work to help, ever so little, towards what he wished above everything in the world.

“What makes you in such a hurry to suppose we want to get a day’s work out of you for nothing?” asked Mr. Nelson. He thrust half-a-crown into the lad’s waistcoat pocket, saying that he must give it back again, if he led the gentleman wrong. The gentleman had no time to go running about the country on a fool’s errand; Allan must mind that. As Allan touched his hat, and ran down the steps, Mr. Nelson observed that boys with good hearts did not fly about in that way, as if they were merry, on the day of their mother’s funeral.

“Perhaps he is rather thinking of saving his father,” observed the surveyor.

“Well; save as many of them as you can. They seem all going to pot as it is.”

When Allan burst in, carrying nothing of Abby’s, but having a little color in his cheeks for once, his father sat up in his chair, the baby suddenly stopped crying, and Moss asked where he had been. At first, his father disappointed him by being listless—first refusing to believe anything good, and then saying that any good that could happen now was too late; and Abby could not help crying all the more because this was not thought about a year sooner. It was her poor husband that had made the stir; and now they were going to take his advice the very day that he was laid in his grave. They all tried to comfort her, and said how natural it was that she should feel it so; yet, amidst all their sympathy, they could not help being cheered that something was to be done at last.

By degrees, and not slow degrees, Woodruffe became animated. It was surprising how many things he desired Allan to be sure not to forget to point out to the surveyor, and to urge upon those he was to visit. At last he said he would go himself. It was a very serious business, and he ought to make an effort to have it done properly. It was a great effort, but he would make it. Not rheumatism, nor anything else, should keep him at home. Allan was glad at heart to see such signs of energy in his father, though he might feel some natural disappointment at being left at home, and some perplexity as to what, in that case, he ought to do about the half-crown, if Mr. Nelson should be gone home. The morning settled this, however. The surveyor was in his gig. If Allan could hang on, or keep up with it, it would be very well, as he would be wanted to open the gates, and to lead the way in places too wet for his father, who was not worth such a pair of patent waterproof tall boots as the surveyor had on.

The circuit was not a very wide one; yet it was dark before they got home. There are always difficulties in arrangements which require combined action. Here there were different levels in the land, and different tempers and views among the occupiers. Mr. Brown had heard nothing about the matter, and could not be hurried till he saw occasion. Mr. Taylor liked his field best, wet—would not have it drier on any account, for fear of the summer sun. When assured that drought took no hold on well-dried land in comparison with wet land, he shook with laughter, and asked if they expected him to believe that. Mrs. Scott, whose combination with two others was essential to the drainage of three portions, would wait another year. They must go on without her; and after another year, she would see what she would do. Another had drained his land in his own way long ago, and did not expect that anybody would ask him to put his spade into another man’s land, or to let any other man put his spade into his. These were all the obstructions. Everybody else was willing, or at least, not obstructive. By clever management, it was thought that the parties concerned could make an island of Mrs. Scott and her field, and win over Mr. Brown by the time he was wanted, and show Mr. Taylor that, as his field could no longer be as wet as it had been, he might as well try the opposite condition—they promising to flood his field as often and as thoroughly as he pleased, if he found it the worse for being drained. They could not obtain all they wished, where everybody was not as wise as could be wished; but so much was agreed upon as made the experienced surveyor think that the rest would follow; enough, already, to set more laborers to work than the place could furnish. Two or three stout men were sent from a distance; and when they had once cut a clear descent from the ditch to the river, and had sunk the ditch to seven feet deep, and made the bottom even, and narrowed it to three feet, it was a curious thing to see how ready the neighbors became to unite their drains with it. It used to be said, that here—however it might be elsewhere—the winter was no time for digging; but that must have meant that no winter-digging would bring a spring crop; and that therefore it was useless. Now, the sound of the spade never ceased for the rest of the winter; and the laborers thought it the best winter they had ever known for constant work. Those who employed the labor hoped it would answer—found it expensive—must trust it was all right, and would yield a profit by and by. As for the Woodruffes, they were too poor to employ laborers. But some little hope had entered their hearts again, and brought strength, not only to their hearts, but to their very limbs. They worked like people beginning the world. As poor Abby could keep the house and sew, while attending to her little school, Becky did the lighter parts (and some which were far from light) of the garden work, finding easy tasks for Moss; and Allan worked like a man at the drains. They had been called good drains before; but now, there was an outfall for deeper ones; and deeper they must be made. Moreover, a strong rivalry arose among the neighbors about their respective portions of the combined drainage; and under the stimulus of ambition, Woodruffe recovered his spirits and the use of his limbs wonderfully. He suffered cruelly from his rheumatism; and in the evenings felt as if he could never more lift a spade; yet, not the less was he at work again in the morning, and so sanguine as to the improvement of his ground, that it was necessary to remind him, when calculating his gains, that it would take two years, at least, to prove the effects of his present labors.

VII.

It was observed by Woodruffe’s family, during one week of spring of the next year, that he was very absent. He was not in low spirits, but absorbed in thought, and much devoted to making calculations with pencil and paper. At last, out it came, one morning at breakfast.

“I wonder how we should all like to have Harry Hardiman to work with us again?”

Every one looked up. Harry! where was Harry? Was he here? Was he coming?

“Why, I will tell you what I have been thinking,” said their father. “I have thought long and carefully, and I believe I have made up my mind to send for Harry, to come and work for us as he used to do. We have not labor enough on the ground. Two stout men to the acre is the smallest allowance for trying what could be made of the place.”

“That is what Taylor and Brown are employing now on the best part of their land,” said Allan; “that is, when they can get the labor. There is such difference between that and one man to four or five acres, as there was before, that they can’t always get the labor.”

“Just so; and therefore,” continued Woodruffe, “I am thinking of sending for Harry. Our old neighborhood was not prosperous when we left it, and I fancy it cannot have improved since; and Harry might be glad to follow his master to a thriving neighborhood; and he is such a careful fellow that I dare say he has money for the journey,—even if he has a wife by this time, as I suppose he has.”

Moss looked most pleased, where all were pleased, at the idea of seeing Harry again. His remembrance of Harry was of a tall young man, who used to carry him on his shoulders, and wheel him in the empty water-barrel, and sometimes offer to dip him into it when it was full, and show him how to dig in the sand-heap with his little wooden spade.

“Your rent, to be sure, is much lower than in the old place,” observed Abby.

“Why, we must not build upon that,” replied the father; “rent is rising here, and will rise. My landlord was considerate in lowering mine to £3 per acre, when he saw how impossible it was to make it answer; and he says he shall not ask more yet on account of the labor I laid out at the time of the drainage. But when I have partly repaid myself, the rent will rise to £5; and, in fact, I have made my calculations in regard to Harry’s coming at a higher rent than that.”

“Higher than that?”

“Yes; I should not be surprised if I found myself paying, as market-gardeners near London do, ten pounds per acre before I die.”

“Or rather, to let the ground to me for that, father,” said Allan, “when it is your own property, and you are tired of work, and disposed to turn it over to me. I will pay you ten pounds per acre then, and let you have all the cabbages you can eat besides. It is capital land, and that is the truth. Come—shall that be a bargain?”

Woodruffe smiled, and said he owed a duty to Allan. He did not like to see him so hard worked as to be unable to take due care of his own corner of the garden;—unable to enter fairly into the competition for the prizes at the Horticultural Show in the summer. Becky now, too, ought to be spared from all but occasional help in the garden. Above all, the ground was now in such an improving state that it would be waste not to bestow due labor upon it. Put in the spade where you would, the soil was loose and well-aired as needs be: the manure penetrated it thoroughly; the frost and heat pulverized, instead of binding it; and the crops were succeeding each other so fast, that the year would be a very profitable one.

“Where will Harry live, if he comes?” asked Abby.

“We must get another cottage added to the new row. Easily done! Cottages so healthy as these new ones pay well. Good rents are offered for them,—to save doctors’ bills and loss of time from sickness;—and, when once a system of house-drainage is set a-going, it costs scarcely more in adding a cottage to a group, to make it all right, than to run it up upon solid clay as used to be the way here. Well, I have a good mind to write to Harry to-day. What do you think of it,—all of you?”

Fortified by the opinion of all his children, Mr. Woodruffe wrote to Harry. Meantime, Allan and Becky went to cut the vegetables that were for sale that day; and Moss delighted himself in running after and catching the pony in the meadow below. The pony was not very easily caught, for it was full of spirit. Instead of the woolly insipid grass that it used to crop, and which seemed to give it only fever and no nourishment, it now fed on sweet fresh grass, which had no sour stagnant water soaking its roots. The pony was so full of play this morning that Moss could not get hold of it. Though much stronger than a year ago, he was not yet anything like so robust as a boy of his age should be; and he was growing heated, and perhaps a little angry, as the pony galloped off towards some distant trees, when a boy started up behind a bush, caught the halter, brought the pony round with a twitch, and led him to Moss. Moss fancied he had seen the boy before, and then his white teeth reminded Moss of one thing after another.

“I came for some marsh plants,” said the boy. “You and I got plenty once somewhere hereabouts, but I cannot find them now.”

“You will not find any now. We have no marsh now.”

The stranger said he dared not go back without them; mother wanted them badly. She would not believe him if he said he could not find any. There were plenty about two miles off, along the railway, among the clay-pits, he was told; but none nearer. The boy wanted to know where the clay-pits hereabouts were. He could not find one of them.

“I will show you one of them,” said Moss; “the one where you and I used to hunt rats.” And, leading the pony, he showed his old gypsy play-fellow all the improvements, beginning with the great ditch,—now invisible from being covered in. While it was open, he said, it used to get choked, and the sides were plastered after rain, and soon became grass-grown, so that it was found worth while to cover it in; and now it would want little looking to for years to come. As for the clay-pit, where the rats used to pop in and out,—it was now a manure-pit, covered in. There was a drain into it from the pony’s stable and from the pig-styes; and it was near enough to the garden to receive the refuse and sweepings. A heavy lid, with a ring in the middle, covered the pit, so that nobody could fall in in the dark, and no smell could get out. Moss begged the boy to come a little further, and he would show him his own flower-bed; and when the boy was there, he was shown everything else: what a cart-load of vegetables lay cut for sale; and what an arbor had been made of the pent-house under which Moss used to take shelter, when he could do nothing better than keep off the birds; and how fine the ducks were,—the five ducks that were so serviceable in eating off the slugs; and what a comfortable nest had been made for them to lay their eggs in, beside the water-tank in the corner; and what a variety of scarecrows the family had invented,—each having one, to try which would frighten the sparrows most. While Moss was telling how difficult it was to deal with the sparrows, because they could not be frightened for more than three days by any kind of scarecrow, he heard Allan calling him, in a tone of vexation, at being kept waiting so long. In an instant the stranger boy was off,—leaping the gate, and flying along the meadow till he was hidden behind a hedge.

Two or three days after this one of the ducks was missing. The last time that the five had been seen together was when Moss was showing them to his visitor. The morning after Moss finally gave up hope, the glass of Allan’s hotbed was found broken, and in the midst of the bed itself was a deep foot-track, crushing the cucumber plants, and, with them, Allan’s hopes of a cucumber prize at the Horticultural Exhibition in the summer. On more examination, more mischief was discovered, some cabbages had been stolen, and another duck was missing. In the midst of the general concern, Woodruffe burst out a-laughing. It struck him that the chief of the scarecrows had changed his hat; and so he had. The old straw hat which used to flap in the wind so serviceably was gone, and in its stead appeared a helmet,—a saucepan full of holes, battered and split, but still fit to be a helmet to a scarecrow.

“I could swear to the old hat,” observed Woodruffe, “if I should have the luck to see it on anybody’s head.”

“And so could I,” said Becky, “for I mended it,—bound it with black behind, and green before, because I had not green ribbon enough. But nobody would wear it before our eyes.”

“That is why I suspect there are strangers hovering about. We must watch.”

Now Moss, for the first time, bethought himself of the boy he had brought in from the meadow; and now, for the first time, he told his family of that encounter.

“I never saw such a simpleton,” his father declared. “There, go along and work! Now, don’t cry, but hold up like a man and work.”

Moss did cry; he could not help it; but he worked too. He would fain have been one of the watchers, moreover; but his father said he was too young. For two nights he was ordered to bed, when Allan took his dark lantern, and went down to the pent-house; the first night accompanied by his father, and the next by Harry Hardiman, who had come on the first summons. By the third evening, Moss was so miserable that his sisters interceded for him, and he was allowed to go down with his old friend Harry.

It was a starlight night, without a moon. The low country lay dim, but unobscured by mist. After a single remark on the fineness of the night, Harry was silent. Silence was their first business. They stole round the fence as if they had been thieves themselves, listened for some time before they let themselves in at the gate, passed quickly in, and locked the gate (the lock of which had been well oiled), went behind every screen, and along every path, to be sure that no one was there, and finally, perceiving that the remaining ducks were safe, settled themselves in the darkness of the pent-house.

There they sat, hour after hour, listening. If there had been no sound, perhaps they could not have borne the effort; but the sense was relieved by the bark of a dog at a distance, and then by the hoot of the owl that was known to have done them good service in mousing, many a time; and once, by the passage of a train on the railway above. When these were all over, poor Moss had much ado to keep awake, and at last his head sank on Harry’s shoulder, and he forgot where he was, and everything else in the world. He was awakened by Harry’s moving, and then whispering quite into his ear:—

“Sit you still. I hear somebody yonder. No—sit you still. I won’t go far—not out of call; but I must get between them and the gate.”

With his lantern under his coat, Harry stole forth, and Moss stood up, all alone in the darkness and stillness. He could hear his heart beat, but nothing else, till footsteps on the path came nearer and nearer. They came quite up; they came in, actually into the arbor; and then the ducks were certainly fluttering. In an instant more, there was a gleam of light upon the white plumage of the ducks, and then light enough to show that this was the gypsy boy, with a dark lantern hung round his neck, and, at the same moment, to show the gypsy boy that Moss was there. The two boys stood, face to face, motionless from utter amazement, and the ducks had scuttled and waddled away before they recovered themselves. Then, Moss flew at him in a glorious passion, at once of rage and fear.

“Leave him to me, Moss,” cried Harry, casting light upon the scene from his lantern, while he collared the thief with the other hand. “Let go, I say, Moss. There, now we’ll go round and be sure whether there is any one else in the garden, and then we’ll lodge this young rogue where he will be safe.”

Nobody was there, and they went home in the dawn, locked up the thief in the shed, and slept through what remained of the night.

It was about Mr. Nelson’s usual time for coming down the line; and it was observed that he now always stopped at this station till the next train passed,—probably because it was a pleasure to him to look upon the improvement of the place. It was no surprise therefore to Woodruffe to see him standing on the embankment after breakfast; and it was natural that Mr. Nelson should be immediately told that the gypsies were here again, and how one of them was caught thieving.

“Thieving! So you found some of your property upon him, did you!”

“Why, no. I thought myself that it was a pity that Moss did not let him alone till he had laid hold of a duck or something.”

“Pho! pho! don’t tell me you can punish the boy for theft, when you can’t prove that he stole anything. Give him a whipping, and let him go.”

“With all my heart. It will save me much trouble to finish off the matter so.”

Mr. Nelson seemed to have some curiosity about the business; for he accompanied Woodruffe to the shed. The boy seemed to feel no awe of the great man whom he supposed to be a magistrate, and when asked whether he felt none, he giggled and said “No;” he had seen the gentleman more afraid of his mother than anybody ever was of him, he fancied. On this, a thought struck Mr. Nelson. He would now have his advantage of the gypsy woman, and might enjoy, at the same time, an opportunity of studying human nature under stress—a thing he liked, when the stress was not too severe. So he passed a decree on the spot that, it being now nine o’clock, the boy should remain shut up without food till noon, when he should be severely flogged, and driven from the neighborhood; and with this pleasant prospect before him, the young rogue remained, whistling ostentatiously, while his enemies locked the door upon him.

“Did you hear him shoot the bolt?” asked Woodruffe. “If he holds to that, I don’t know how I shall get at him at noon.”

“There, now, what fools people are! Why did you not take out the bolt? A pretty constable you would make! Come—come this way. I am going to find the gypsy-tent again. You are wondering that I am not afraid of the woman, I see; but, you observe, I have a hold over her this time. What do you mean by allowing those children to gather about your door? You ought not to permit it.”

“They are only the scholars. Don’t you see them going in? My daughter keeps a little school, you know, since her husband’s death.”

“Ah, poor thing! poor thing!” said Mr. Nelson, as Abby appeared on the threshold, calling the children in.

Mr. Nelson always contrived to see some one or more of the family when he visited the station; but it so happened, that he had never entered the door of their dwelling. Perhaps he was not himself fully conscious of the reason. It was, that he could not bear to see Abby’s young face within the widow’s cap, and to be thus reminded that hers was a case of cruel wrong; that if the most ordinary thought and care had been used in preparing the place for human habitation, her husband might be living now, and she the happy creature that she would never be again.

On his way to the gypsies, Mr. Nelson saw some things that pleased him in his heart, though he found fault with them all. What business had Woodruffe with an additional man in his garden? It could not possibly answer. If it did not, the fellow must be sent away again. He must not burden the parish. The occupiers here seemed all alike. Such a fancy for new labor! One, two, six men at work on the land within sight at that moment, over and above what there used to be! It must be looked to. Humph! he could get to the alders dryshod now; but that was owing solely to the warmth of the spring. It was nonsense to attribute everything to drainage. Drainage was a good thing; but fine weather was better.

The gypsy-tent was found behind the alders as before, but no longer in a swamp. The woman was sitting on the ground at the entrance as before, but not now with a fevered child laid across her knees. She was weaving a basket.

“Oh, I see,” said Woodruffe, “this is the way our osiers go.”

“You have not many to lose, now-a-days,” said the woman.

“You are welcome to all the rushes you can find,” said Woodruffe; “but where is your son?”

Some change of countenance was seen in the woman; but she answered carelessly that the children were playing yonder.

“The one I mean is not there,” said Woodruffe, “We have him safe—caught him stealing my ducks.”

She called the boy a villain—disowned him, and so forth; but when she found the case a hopeless one, she did not, and, therefore, probably could not scold—that is, anybody but herself and her husband. She cursed herself for coming into this silly place, where now no good was to be got. When she was brought to the right point of perplexity about what to do, seeing that it would not do to stay, and being unable to go while her boy was in durance, she was told that his punishment should be summary, though severe, if she would answer frankly certain questions. When she had once begun giving her confidence, she seemed to enjoy the license. When her husband came up, he looked as if he only waited for the departure of his visitors to give his wife the same amount of thrashing that her son was awaiting elsewhere. She vowed that they would never pitch their tent here again. It used to be the best station in their whole round—the fogs were so thick! From sunset to long after sunrise, it had been as good as a winter night, for going where they pleased without fear of prying eyes. There was not a poultry-yard or pig-stye within a couple of miles round, where they could not creep up through the fog. And they escaped the blame, too; for the swamp and ditches used to harbor so much vermin, that the gypsies were not always suspected, as they were now. Till lately, people shut themselves into their homes, or the men went to the public-house in the chill evenings; and there was little fear of meeting any one. But now that the fogs were gone, people were out in their gardens, on these fine evenings, and there were men in the meadows, returning from fishing; for they could angle now, when their work was done, without the fear of catching an ague in the marsh as they went home.

Mr. Nelson used vigorously his last opportunity of lecturing these people. He had it all his own way, for the humility of the gypsies was edifying. Woodruffe fancied he saw some finger-talk passing, the while, though the gypsies never looked at each other, or raised their eyes from the ground. Woodruffe had to remind the Director that the whistle of the next train would soon be heard; and this brought the lecture to an abrupt conclusion. On his finishing off with, “I expect, therefore, that you will remember my advice, and never show your face here again, and that you will take to a proper course of life in future, and bring up your son to honest industry;” the woman, with a countenance of grief, seized one hand and covered it with kisses, and the husband took the other hand and pressed it to his breast.

“We must make haste,” observed Mr. Nelson, as he led the way quickly back; “but I think I have made some impression upon them. You see now the right way to treat these people. I don’t think you will see them here again.”

“I don’t think we shall.”

As he reached the steps the whistle was heard, and Mr. Nelson could only wave his hand to Woodruffe, rush up the embankment, and throw himself panting into a carriage. Only just in time!

By an evening train he re-appeared. When thirty miles off, he had wanted his purse, and it was gone. It had no doubt paid for the gypsies’ final gratitude.

Of course, a sufficient force was immediately sent to the alder clump; but there was nothing there but some charred sticks, and some clean pork bones, this time, instead of feathers of fowls, and a cabbage leaf or two. The boy had had his whipping at noon, after a conference with his little brother at the keyhole, which had caused him to withdraw the bolt, and offer no resistance. Considering his cries and groans, he had run off with surprising agility, and was now, no doubt, far away.

VIII.

The gypsies came no more. The fogs came no more. The fever came no more, at least, in such a form as to threaten the general safety. Where it still lingered, it was about those only who deserved it,—in any small farm-house, where the dung-yard was too near the house; and in some cottage where the slatternly inmates did not mind a green puddle or choked ditch within reach of their noses. More dwellings arose, as the fertility of the land increased, and invited a higher kind of tillage; and among the prettiest of them was one which stood in the corner,—the most sunny corner,—of Woodruffe’s paddock. Harry Hardiman and his wife and child lived there, and the cottage was Woodruffe’s property.

Yet Woodruffe’s rent had been raised, and pretty rapidly. He was now paying eight pounds per acre for his garden-ground, and half that for what was out of the limits of the garden. He did not complain of it; for he was making money fast. His skill and industry deserved this; but skill and industry could not have availed without opportunity. His ground once allowed to show what it was worth, he treated it well; and it answered well to the treatment. By the railway he obtained what manure he wanted from the town; and he sent it back by the railway to town in the form of crisp celery and salads, wholesome potatoes and greens, luscious strawberries, and sweet and early peas. He knew that a Surrey gardener had made his ground yield a profit of two hundred and twenty pounds per acre. He thought that, with his inferior market, he should do well to make his yield one hundred and fifty pounds per acre; and this, by close perseverance, he attained. He could have done it more easily if he had enjoyed good health; but he never enjoyed good health again. His rheumatism had fixed itself too firmly to be entirely removed; and for many days in the year, he was compelled to remain within doors, or to saunter about in the sun, seeing his boys and Harry at work, but unable to help them.

From the time that Allan’s work became worth wages in addition to his subsistence, his father let him rent half a rood of the garden-ground for three years, saying—

“I limit it to three years, my boy, because that term is long enough for you to show what you can do. After three years, I shall not be able to spare the ground at any rent. If you fail, you have no business to rent ground. If you succeed, you will have money in your pocket wherewith to hire land elsewhere. Now you have to show us what you can do.”

“Yes, father,” was Allan’s short but sufficient reply.

It was observed by the family that, from this time forward, Allan’s eye was on every plot of ground in the neighborhood which could, by possibility, ever be offered for hire; yet did his attention never wander from that which was already under his hand. And that which was so great an object to him became a sort of pursuit to the whole family. Moss guarded Allan’s frames, and made more and more prodigious scarecrows. Their father gave his very best advice. Becky, who was no longer allowed, as a regular thing, to work in the garden, found many a spare half-hour for hoeing and weeding, and trimming and tying up, in Allan’s beds; and Abby found, as she sat in her little school, that she could make nets for his fruit trees. It was thus no wonder that, when a certain July day in the second year arrived, the whole household was in a state of excitement, because it was a sort of crisis in Allan’s affairs.

Though breakfast was early that morning, Becky and Allan and Moss were spruce in their best clothes. A hamper stood at the door, and Allan was packing in another, which had no lid, two or three flower-pots, which presented a glorious show of blossom. Abby was putting a new ribbon on her sister’s straw bonnet; and Harry was in waiting to carry up the hampers to the station. It was the day of the Horticultural Show at the town. Woodruffe had been too unwell to think of going till this morning; but now the sight of the preparations, and the prospect of a warm day, inspired him, and he thought he would go. At last he went, and they were gone. Abby never went up to the station; nobody ever asked her to go there, not even her own child, who perhaps had not thought of the possibility of it. But when the train was starting, she stood at the upper window with her child, and held him so that he might lean out, and see the last carriage disappear as it swept round the curve. After that the day seemed long, though Harry came up at the dinner-hour to say what he thought of the great gooseberry in particular, and of everything else that Allan had carried with him. It was holiday time, and there was no school to fill up the day. Before the evening, the child became restless, and Abby fell into low spirits, as she was apt to do when left long alone; so that Harry stopped suddenly at the door when he was rushing in to announce that the train was within sight.

“Shall I take the child, Miss?” said Harry. (He always called her “Miss.”) “I will carry him—— But, sure, here they come! Here comes Moss,—ready to roll down the steps! My opinion is that there’s a prize.”

Moss was called back by a voice which everybody obeyed. Allan should himself tell his sister the fortune of the day, their father said.

There were two prizes, one of which was for the wonderful plate of gooseberries; and at this news Harry nodded, and declared himself anything but surprised. If that gooseberry had not carried the day, there would have been partiality in the judges, that was all; and nobody could suppose such a thing as that. Yet Harry could have told, if put upon his honor, that he was rather disappointed that everything that Allan carried had not gained a prize. When he mentioned one or two, his master told him he was unreasonable; and he supposed he was.

Allan laid down upon the table, for his sister’s full assurance, his sovereign, and his half-sovereign, and his tickets. She turned away rather abruptly, and seemed to be looking whether the kettle was near boiling for tea. Her father went up to her; and on his first whispered words, the sob broke forth which made all look round.

“I was thinking of one, too, my dear, that I wish was here at this moment. I can feel for you, my dear.”

“But you don’t know—you don’t know—you never knew——.” She could not go on.

“What don’t I know, my dear?”

“That he constantly blamed himself for saying anything to bring you here. He said you had never prospered from the hour you came, and now——”

And now Woodruffe could not speak, as the past came fresh upon him. In a few moments, however, he rallied, saying,

“But we must consider Allan. He must not think that his success makes us sad.”

Allan declared that it was not about gaining the prizes that he was chiefly glad. It was because it was now proved what a fair field he had before him. There was nothing that might not be done with such a soil as they had to deal with now.

Harry was quite of this opinion. There were more and more people set to work upon the soil all about them; and the more it was worked the more it yielded. He never saw a place of so much promise. And if it had a bad name in regard to healthiness, he was sure that was unfair,—or no longer fair. He and his were full of health and happiness, as they hoped to see everybody else in time; and, for his part, if he had all England before him, or the whole world, to choose a place to live in, he would choose the very place he was in, and the very cottage, and the very ground to work on that had produced such a gooseberry and such strawberries as he had seen that day.