"And how did you get home?"

"Thomas Carré took me across and I ran on alone, but it was months
before I could forget poor old Hirzel Mollet."

"I should think so, indeed. That was a terrible thing to see."

The opening of the mines, and the influx of the Welsh and Cornishmen and
their wives and children, with their new and up-to-date ideas of living
and dressing, had wrought a great and not altogether wholesome change
upon the original inhabitants.

All the week they were hard at work in their fields or their boats, but
on Sunday the lonely lanes leading to Little Sark were thronged with
sightseers, curious to inspect the mines and the latest odd fashions
among the miners' wives and daughters.

Odd, and extremely useless little parasols, were then the vogue in
England. The miners' women-folk flaunted these before the dazzled eyes
of the Sark girls, and Sark forthwith burst into flower of many-coloured
parasols.

The mine ladies dressed in printed cottons of strange and wonderful
patterns. The Sark girls must do the same.

"Tiens!" ejaculated Nance more than once, as they walked. "Here is Judi
Le Masurier with a new pink parasol!--and a straw bonnet with green
strings!--and every day you'll see her about the fields without so much
as a sun-bonnet on! And Rachel Guille has got a new print dress all red
roses and lilac! Mon Gyu, what are we coming to!"