'Not if you were to take as much pains with him as you do with the
patients who pay you, Mrs. Thatcher?' asked Milly.

'I've taken pains with him,' answered the woman, with a scowl. 'I
took to him kindly enough when he was a little fellow; but he's
grown up to be nothing but a plague and a burden to me.'

The boy left off grinning, and his poor weak chin sank lower on his
narrow chest. His attitude had been a stooping one from the first;
but he drooped visibly under the old woman's reproof.

'Can he employ himself in no way?'

'No, miss; except in picking the herbs and roots for me sometimes.
He can do that, and he knows one from t'other.'

'He's of some use to you, at any rate, then,' said Milly.

'Little enough,' the old woman answered sulkily. 'I don't want help;
I've plenty of time to gather them myself. But I've taught him to
pick them, and it's the only thing he ever could learn.'

'Poor fellow! He's your only grandchild, isn't he, Mrs. Thatcher?'

'Yes, he's the only one, miss, and he'd need be. I don't know how I
should keep another. You can't remember my daughter Ruth? She was as
pretty a girl as you'd care to see. She was housemaid at Cumber
priory in Mrs. Egerton's time, and she married the butler. They set
up in business in a little public-house in Thornleigh village, and