round to the back door.'

I thought I could rather speak to the owner of that voice than to
the girl before me; so I passed her, and stood at the entrance of
a room hat in hand, for this side-door opened straight into the
hall or house-place where the family sate when work was done.
There was a brisk little woman of forty or so ironing some huge
muslin cravats under the light of a long vine-shaded casement
window. She looked at me distrustfully till I began to speak. 'My
name is Paul Manning,' said I; but I saw she did not know the
name. 'My mother's name was Moneypenny,' said I,--'Margaret
Moneypenny.'

'And she married one John Manning, of Birmingham,' said Mrs
Holman, eagerly.

'And you'll be her son. Sit down! I am right glad to see you. To
think of your being Margaret's son! Why, she was almost a child
not so long ago. Well, to be sure, it is five-and-twenty years
ago. And what brings you into these parts?'

She sate down herself, as if oppressed by her curiosity as to all
the five-and-twenty years that had passed by since she had seen
my mother. Her daughter Phillis took up her knitting--a long grey
worsted man's stocking, I remember--and knitted away without
looking at her work. I felt that the steady gaze of those deep
grey eyes was upon me, though once, when I stealthily raised mine
to hers, she was examining something on the wall above my head.

When I had answered all my cousin Holman's questions, she heaved