Meantime, as the winter wore on, the faces of James Pontin and his wife got to look harder, older, and more withered. They could not forget the scandal about Annie, for she was at their door; and what affected them even more, they heard that Benny had enlisted at the Cowley barracks, and then that he was going to Egypt. They waited and waited for him to write or come, but nothing happened; then Uncle went to the barracks and found he had sailed from Portsmouth two days before. This was all the news of Benny.

It must not be supposed because Annie was not happy that she did not love Jesse. She had not been carried into his arms by one of those deep tides of passion which sweep smooth over all the rocks and pebbles of life, but she loved him in spite of, partly because of, an acute sensitiveness to the roughness of her lot. She attached herself to him with the affection of the civilized being, and with the clinging dependence of the savage woman on the man who holds her fate in his hands. Jesse's great love for her could not transmute his natural stupidity, and he did not perceive that she was unhappy. Indeed she was not so when he came home and they sat close together by the fire, he smoking or mending harness, and she with her needle. His wages were low, but they kept them in the necessaries of life. The improvidence of the very poor has its bright side. Life would indeed be intolerable were they always contemplating the gulf of destitution on whose brink they hang. But Annie belonged to a provident family, and could not as yet acquire their happy thoughtlessness. Her father's savings and club-money had lasted them nearly to the end of his illness, and he had fretted a great deal when they were gone. She, as the weekly wage went in rent and food and. fuel, wondered how she would be able to prepare for the baby's advent and replace their own clothes, which even the neatest mending would not make everlasting. Aunt had sent her her own few possessions by the hands of Abel. She could not bear to be idle so much of the day while Jesse was working hard, but she was wholly unfit for field labour, and she could get no needlework in High Cross, because there were no gentry there, and she was not intimate enough with the villagers to get those odd jobs which are given away among friends. There was however one person who from time to time asked her in to do a bit of mangling. This was Mrs. Baker, the Vicarage washerwoman. Mrs. Baker plump, pink-complexioned woman, as good-natured as is possible for a very talkative person who would rather say anything than nothing. A few out of her innumerable words had lately given offence to the lady who owned the village mangle,

was

who had retorted by mentioning episodes in Mrs. Baker's early career which she herself commonly forgot. The village had

allowed her to forget them, for as regards women the social code of the poor is usually both more reasonable and more Christian than ours. Having routed the lady of the mangle from a business point of view by getting a machine of her own, Mrs. Baker was not sorry when she required help to employ a person of no obtrusive respectability. Nor, to do her justice, was she sorry to hold out a hand to the girl—a hand rough but friendly, and as helpful as was allowed by the pressure of her own necessities and the severe supervision of her eldest daughter, who was laundrymaid in a "good" house in the neighbourhood, and particular about her company. Mrs. Baker's interest in Annie's affairs was, if possible, livelier than in that of her neighbours in general. She was never tired of her own remarks about them, which, though always well meant, were often exasperating.

"Have Williams said anything more about marrying you, my dear?" she would ask, while Annie was turning the mangle.

"No," answered Annie with determined indifference. "It's no good his talking about it till he can do it."

Mrs. Baker shook her head.

"Well, well! if I was you I should feel a deal more comfortable if he talked about it a bit over his glass, or o' Sundays, as it might be. I likes to know what's in folk's minds, and whose to tell you if they don't theirselves? It ain't as if you could put any dependence on men-they're a shifty lot, that they are, my dear; and so you'll say when you knows 'em. Why, my darter was telling me only yesterday what doings there've been down at her place. The footman, as has been engaged to the housekeeper ever since he was in buttons, give warning, and is going to marry the kitching-maid. Lor! ain't they false!"

Annie seemed strangely unmoved by this instance of male perfidy, which sent such a thrill of exhilarating horror through Mrs. Baker's susceptible bosom. She only said stubbornly, “Jesse isn't one to talk, and he isn't one to change his mind neither." And pausing and blushing a little "Then he's that fond of me he'd do whatever I asked him."

The washerwoman folded Mr. Hayes' broad white choker and drew her iron slowly and steadily along it. As she got near the end of it she said:

"Bless you, that's what girls always think o' the first. You gets to know 'em after a bit."

"Mrs. Baker!" cried Annie, "don't you nor anyone else go

talking as though Jesse didn't want to marry me. It's shameful untrue, and I won't hear a word more about it."

Mrs. Baker looked up, half amused and wholly surprised.

"Deary me, Annie Pontin, what a sperrit you've got! You're just for all the world like me when I was a girl-such a sperrit as I had! I'm sure I hope Williams do mean honest by you; he seems a steady young chap, and one as would act right. As to his being so fond, don't you reckon on that. It's their natur to begin fond, and it's their natur to wear it off; but you needn't fret about it, for most like by that time he'll be used to your ways and won't trouble to change-that is, if you don't give him words. He's but a lad yet, and he's bound to be like the rest of 'em. There'll be times when he'll take his drop too much, and times when there's no pleasing his stomach, and lucky if it's no worse. But just you take my advice-don't you give him no words, and you'll get him to church yet."

Thus did Mrs. Baker, no wiser than her fellow mortals, pronounce judgment on half the human race from the poor premisses of her own span-wide experience.

Happily for Annie she trusted to her own knowledge of Jesse rather than to the washerwoman's knowledge of the world. Yet though she had no doubt as to his intentions, it was galling to find that other people had; especially to a Pontin, who liked to hold her head high.

"Jesse," she said one Sunday evening, "I don't mean to talk to any one again, not till we're married.”

Jesse removed his pipe from his mouth, which gradually expanded into a broad smile. He still took a lover's pleasure in everything she said and looked, and there was something amusingly childish about the air of haughty decision with which she lifted her chin and deposited a tea-cup on the dresser as she made this announcement.

"Lor, Annie!" he ejaculated.

"I don't mean exactly as I sha'n't speak," she went on, putting the things on the shelf with quick deft motions; "of course I must buy what we want and that. But I shan't go talking to them women over at Mrs. Baker's any more, Mrs. Pike and Mrs. Clinker and such like; nor Mrs. Baker more than I can help."

"I should ha' thought you'd ha' liked a bit of a chat," returned Jess; "the women-folk they mostly does. But if you likes to keep yourself to yourself, all the better, says I—all the better."

Annie put her arms round his neck, and he looked up at her with his bright face.

"I shouldn't mind if I never set eyes on any one but you," she said, and kissed him once or twice. And then-" You are good and kind to me, Jess, and I don't believe you'll get different. The others they know nothing about you, and they're always pretending they know a lot more than I do."

Why, what can they know about me more nor everyone knows?" asked Jesse, bewildered. "Let alone the work'us, I've kep' myself as respectable as other folks, and respectabler nor some.' As he thought it over he became as nearly as possible indignant. "What ha' they been telling you about me, I'd like to know?" he reiterated.

66

They say," Annie answered, "I'm not to fancy you'll keep on being fond of me. Men are always like that for a bit, they say; and they want me to think maybe you won't marry me after all, not unless I take a deal of trouble to make you."

Jesse ruminated silently for a minute or two, chuckled, and gradually broke into a loud laugh. He drew Annie's head down and gave her a smacking kiss on the ear.

"By Jinger, my dear," he said, "you did give me a start! I was afeard there was some one casting about to get me into trouble with the Master. Lor, Annie! whatever made you listen to their nonsense? I never thought you was such a silly."

Annie smiled and blushed, and wondered why she had. Then she kneeled down on the floor in front of the fire and put her hand in Jesse's. He kept on looking at her silently, while the red firelight brightened the gold in her hair and the soft roses in her cheeks; then he laughed again.

So they sat by the fire and could well afford to make merry at the expense of their neighbours, who had gone so much further along the dull road of life and found nothing as sweet by the way-had gathered nothing more valuable on their journey than the sterile dust miscalled "knowledge of the world.”

The sixpences Annie earned at Mrs. Baker's were too occasional to make a sensible difference in their income, and one day she thought of a plan for getting work in Oxford. When the dirty February snow had melted from under the hedges, and small and foolish primroses were sunning themselves in the open places of the coppice, she set off to Horseley with a little money in her pocket, which she had saved out of the fuel since the weather had been warmer. She brought back with her a bit of Turkey-red and some white thread, and by the next evening had fashioned a tiny embroidered pinafore, such as had been a speciality of the school in which she had been taught. She put

her best work into it, and felt very happy as she stitched away, remembering how popular these little garments had been with the ladies who visited the school from time to time. When it was done she spent some ill-spared pence in a ride to Oxford. If on arriving there she had taken it to the villas of the suburbs she would have found more than one customer for her work; but going from door to door was too like begging. So she went to the shopkeepers, and shopkeepers, especially provincial ones, are slow to believe that their customers can affect any fashion which does not purport to come from Paris. The girl worked well, but she could give no references as to character; and as to the pinafore, they could not picture any ladylike woman of their acquaintance shrouding the charms of her light-ringleted plaidsashed infant in such an unusual garment. They all gave Annie very plainly to understand that they did not admire her pinafore or wish to see her again. So she jogged drearily home in the market cart, with the little parcel in her lap.

It was summer before she again tried for work, and this time a greater misfortune befell. She heard that a farmer's daughter some miles away was going to be married, and that if she went off at once she might get some of the trousseau to make. She started off after tea one day, and returned unsuccessful, late in the evening. Jesse had been helping to stack hay in the hot sun all the afternoon, and after that had watered the horses in one of the deep fish-ponds at the Hall. A young horse, pleased to disport himself in the cool water after straining and sweating so many hours in the heavy hay-waggon, left the decorous ranks of his elders, where they stood soberly drinking and stirring up the mud at the edge, and plunged into the pond breast-high, sucking down great delicious draughts of dark water from under the broad leaves and silver cups of the trembling water-lilies. Not only so, but when the others shuffled dripping up to the farm-yard, slow and contented, this insolent and ill-regulated young horse continued to stand in the middle of the pond, deaf to the exhortations of Jesse and out of reach of his long whip; whereupon Jesse plunged into the water and drove him out, splashing and snorting, to receive the due chastisement of his sins. However, in the long run it was the man who suffered most. When his work was finished he went home, and finding Annie not yet returned, lay down to rest thinking she would be back presently to get supper; but before she got back his clothes, all wet from the pond, had dried upon him. Next morning his limbs ached and his head was heavy, but he worked in the hayfield till the evening, when Mr. Shepherd was giving a supper to all the farm hands. He sat