CHAPTER VII.


HOW ANDREW CAME TO THE GRANGE BY NIGHT.

It was about a ten days after Mrs. Golding's death, and we were
beginning to feel as if our desolation was a thing that had always been
and always would be, for so I think it often seems when a grief is new.
However desolate we were, we were not destitute; she who was gone had
cared for that, and we found a modest dower secured to each of us,
without injury to Andrew's rightful inheritance of the Grange and the
lands belonging thereto; also we were to continue dwelling in the Grange
till its new master should come home and make such dispositions as
pleased him. But for all this we were greatly perplexed; we had been
long without news of Andrew, and could not tell how to get word to him
of Mrs. Golding's death.

On the day I speak of, we had been teased by a visit from Mrs.
Bonithorne, who, professing great sorrow for our loss, and her own loss
of one whom she called her oldest friend, soon fell to talking of
Andrew, and how his unlucky doings were all owing to our good aunt's
foolishness in entertaining so pestilent a heretic as James Westrop
under her roof.

'I warned her of it,' quoth she; 'I said to her, "You will rue it yet,
Margaret; with such an one you should have no dealings, no, not so much
as to eat," and now see what has come of her perverseness!' and
such-like stuff she said, which moved Grace Standfast to say