It was seldom that any one passed her cottage, and when he saw it he was distressed and ashamed that he had not done anything for her before.

Jennifer had just got home, tired and wet and cold. He came into the cheerless place and sat down.

"I had no idea that your cottage was in such a wretched state, Jennifer; I wonder you could live in it," he began.

"Well, 'tis wonderful how comfortable we do get on in it, sir." And Jennifer spoke as cheerfully as ever. "I s'pose if it was better we should have to pay more, so we must set one thing against another, you know."

"Well, I am going to build you another—a new one; I have made up my mind to that. And look, Jennifer, you shall have it for your own as soon as I can get it up, and you can pay me for it."

"I daresay, sir," laughed Jennifer, and she wondered that her friend could seem to joke on such a subject.

"But I mean it," said he, "and, of course, I am going to put you in the way to do it."

"Thank you, sir," said Jennifer, quite unable to see any meaning in the promise. "You see, there's the Guardians, what will they say and all if I do go living in a fine new house?"

"The Guardians! Oh, you must go and tell them that you don't want any more of their money or their loaf either."

"But, sir," said Jennifer, trying to laugh, yet almost too bewildered to succeed, "half crowns and loaves of bread won't grow out of a new house any more than an old one, you know."

"Well, Jennifer, that is what I have come to see you about. Your boys are growing up quite big lads now. What are you going to do with them? What are they—twelve or thirteen years old at least?"

"Just about, sir. I have given them so much head learning as I can. I suppose they must be going out for to do something; but there, 'tis terrible hard for to think about their going away."

"Oh, but I don't think they need go away, Jennifer. I have come to tell you that I have bought that piece of coppice over there. Now, what I have been thinking is this. You and your boys can cut it all down, and make up the faggots with the underwood, and sell it for what it will fetch. That shall go toward the new cottage. And when the land is cleared I will let it to you, and the boys can turn it into potato ground."

Poor Jennifer sat down without a word. She could not take it all in so suddenly and it bewildered her. Clinging to the old ways of her life, and satisfied with the simple round, she shrank from so large a venture, involving so many changes.

"Well, what do you say?" asked her friend, somewhat disappointed that she did not see all the advantages which were so plain to him.

"I don't know what to say, sir. 'Tis very kind of you. But——"

"But what, Jennifer?"

"I was going to say, if you don't mind, I should like one day more in the fields to think it all over. 'Tis a wonderful place for thinking about anything. And nobody but the heavenly Father to talk to."

"Yes, Jennifer, take a day by all means." And he rose to go. "Only remember that you will make out of the coppice more in a month than you can make in the fields in a year; and be your own mistress, too, and come and go as you like."

"In a month!" she said gravely. "Then I am afraid I should be putting my heart in the broken teapot, instead of my money."

However, the next day's thought in the fields showed her a hundred advantages for the boys in the proposal, whatever it might mean for her husband and herself. And the cottage, too; the very suggestion of a new one seemed to make the cracks bigger and the leaks worse. Something would have to be done if she stayed there. So it was settled, yet not without a sigh. This was to be her farewell of the fields.

The sun was setting as she took up her hoe and turned homeward. At the gate she stayed a minute or two, as if to say good-bye. To her eyes the scene was almost sacred. There were the fields with all the young growth of the early spring, and beyond this was the rough outline of the hedges where the rabbits played. There were the hills where the brown trees reached up to the firs, and from beyond which there often came the roar of the ground swell when the great Atlantic breakers thundered on the shore. The very birds had been her company and friends, and she loved them every one—the lark that went soaring upward with an evening hymn; the thrush and the blackbird that piped from the tree top; the rooks that went slowly homeward, a very cloud in the sky, all had come as if to solace and gladden her, and she blessed them all. Her heart went out in thanks to God, as the memory of a thousand mercies rose within her. She took the old worn mittens from her rough, red hands with a sigh, and shut the gate as if she were shutting that chapter of her life.