side of it. "If I'd had Dick, I couldn't have done it!" she panted,
as she scuttled along under the hedge, bending low, almost like an
animal. At the corner of the field she paused. "If I can get over
this hedge, I shall be in the lane," she thought; but the sound of
wheels made her crouch low again; the horse was just passing.
Fascinated, yet terrified, Huldah peeped through the hedge, and saw--
a quiet old farm-horse drawing a hay-cart, and the driver sound
asleep on the shafts! Oh, how her heart thrilled with relief at the
sight! If she had known what prayer was, she would have offered up a
thanksgiving then. As it was, she scrambled out over the hedge and
into the lane in a somewhat sobered mood. The thought of what might
have been, made her heart beat fast and her limbs tremble, and her
new life seemed more than ever beautiful.

Miss Carew meanwhile had stood watching Huldah flitting like a little
dark shadow along the road. "What an odd little brown thing she is!"
she thought to herself, half-amused, half-sad. "I ain't nobody's
relative, I haven't got nobody but Dick! She seemed so cheerful
about it, too, it makes one feel that she did not mind the want.
I wonder--but I must go and hear more about the strange pair who seem
to have dropped out of the clouds to act as good fairies to poor
Martha Perry."

When, about an hour later, Miss Carew reached the little cottage in
Woodend Lane, she found Huldah washing the floor of the little
kitchen, Dick lying in the garden gnawing his bone, and Martha Perry
lying in bed with eighteenpence on the table beside her, and a bunch
of flowers in a jug. Huldah had taken off Mrs. Perry's apron, for
that was far too clean and precious to be worn for such work, whereas
her old dress could not possibly be made shabbier.