nothing was thought of yet for a clear week, found her in the dairy
(the Stricks had not yet fallen on that poverty which came to their roof
under Aunt Senath's shrewish management) standing as one wisht beside
the great red earthen pan of scalded cream.

"And 'ee can b'lieve me or no as it like 'ee, my dears," old Madgy would
say to many a breathless circle in a farm kitchen during the intervals
of her duties overstairs, "but there was the cream in the pan a-heavin'
up an' down in gurt waves, like a rough sea, and her staring at 'en like
one stricken, as she was poor sawl, sure enough. Eh, it was sent for a
sign to her, and a true sign, for that avenen' her man was drowned on
his way to her, with his fine cargo of oil and onions and all. And there
was the cream heavin' in waves for a sign of the rough seas that took
him, though wi' us the skies was fair and the water in the bay as smooth
as silk."

A story that filled simple souls in kitchens with awe, but naturally was
treated more scornfully in drawing-rooms, where it was felt that signs
and portents would hardly be sent to inform a cottage girl of the death
of an onion-seller. For, after all, that is what he amounts to, and the
horrid secret is out.... An onion-seller ... the very words stink in
the nostrils and are fatal to romance.

Fatal to romance in the minds of the fastidious, fatal to respectability
in those of the common people, for only foreigners sold onions. Strange
men with rings in their ears and long, dark curls like a woman's, and an
eye that was at once bold and soft.

Loveday the younger had that eye, save that it had never learned from
life to be bold, and her face was milken white instead of showing the