KENELM rose betimes the next morning somewhat stiff and uneasy, but
sufficiently recovered to feel ravenous. Fortunately, one of the
young ladies, who attended specially to the dairy, was already up, and
supplied the starving hero with a vast bowl of bread and milk. He
then strolled into the hayfield, in which there was now very little
left to do, and but few hands besides his own were employed. Jessie
was not there. Kenelm was glad of that. By nine o'clock his work was
over, and the farmer and his men were in the yard completing the
ricks. Kenelm stole away unobserved, bent on a round of visits. He
called first at the village shop kept by Mrs. Bawtrey, which Jessie
had pointed out to him, on pretence of buying a gaudy neckerchief; and
soon, thanks to his habitual civility, made familiar acquaintance with
the shopwoman. She was a little sickly old lady, her head shaking, as
with palsy, somewhat deaf, but still shrewd and sharp, rendered
mechanically so by long habits of shrewdness and sharpness. She
became very communicative, spoke freely of her desire to give up the
shop, and pass the rest of her days with a sister, widowed like
herself, in a neighbouring town. Since she had lost her husband, the
field and orchard attached to the shop had ceased to be profitable,
and become a great care and trouble; and the attention the shop
required was wearisome. But she had twelve years unexpired of the
lease granted for twenty-one years to her husband on low terms, and
she wanted a premium for its transfer, and a purchaser for the stock
of the shop. Kenelm soon drew from her the amount of the sum she
required for all,--L45.

"You be n't thinking of it for yourself?" she asked, putting on her
spectacles, and examining him with care.