his employers with love.

He loved them all: but Hetty he worshipped.

He knew his place. For an hour past he had been sitting, as became a
servant, beyond earshot of the sisters' talk, yet within call, should
they summon him. Now the goddess had descended from her mountain
with a command, and he ran toward the woodstack as he would have run
and plunged into the water-dyke, had she bidden him.

He returned to find her waiting with her sleeves tucked above her
elbows.

"Oh, Johnny--I forgot the tinder-box!" she cried.

He dropped his burdens and produced it triumphantly from his tail
pocket.

"I thought of that!"

"But you must not!"--as he dropped on his knees and began to unbind
and break up the sticks. "This is my business. I am going into
service, in ten days--at Kelstein: and you must watch and tell me
what I do amiss."

She pulled the faggot towards her, broke up the sticks, and built the
fragments daintily into a heap, with a handful of dry leaves as
basis. The twilight deepened around them as she built. Next she
struck flint on steel, caught the spark on tinder, and blew.
Johnny watched the glow on her cheeks wakening and fading, and,