fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. On
Thursdays Loveday was wont to stay in and see to the mending, but she
reflected that, by sitting up in her bed at night to darn and patch by
the light of the wick that floated in a cup of fish-oil, she might take
charge of some neighbour's children on that day instead and Aunt Senath
be none the wiser. Loveday had a sad lack of principle, doubtless an
heritage from her heathen father.

On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
gorse-bushes.

Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.

She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
younger seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an