In her best bonnet and black silk spencer, (they wore spencers in those days instead of jackets) her light flaxen hair disposed in round curls, her gay chintz gown spotlessly clean; the younger Mrs. Barford looked a comely country wife. Dorothy gave her the whip, and ran ahead to open the gate that led into the road.

"Mrs. Barford," she said, in a hesitating voice, "do not forget to make inquiries about the old folks at the farm, and whether Gilbert has returned. I do so wish to know. I should feel more happy and settled like."

"Never fear la.s.s. I'm dying wi' curiosity to larn all I can aboot them."

She smiled significantly and glanced furtively at Dorothy.

"Old Mrs. Larks wull tell me every thing. She allers picks up all the news. Mayhap, you may hear more than wull please you."

Dorothy felt mad with herself for asking her to inquire about her old friends, and Mrs. Letty commenced giving her instructions about the household during her absence.

"Now mind, Dolly, an' take care o' the babe, an' put no sugar in a's milk. An' see that the men ha' their dinner in right time; an' doant put tew many plooms inter thar doomplins, for 'tis carting day, 'an they 'spect plooms. An' keep the old woman from scolding the lads. She'll be sure to be peeking an' perking inter every thing the moment my back's turned. I shan't be whome afore 'tis time to milk cows. An' mind an' be here to open the gate when I coomes back."

Crack went the whip and away floundered the old horse through the gate.

Dolly, after watching his progress for a few minutes down the hill, with a heavy sigh and a boding antic.i.p.ation of evil tidings, returned slowly to the house.

CHAPTER VI.

NEWS OF GILBERT.

The elder Mrs. Barford, the real mistress of the house, for the farm belonged to her, and she shared the profits with her son; had quite recovered from the ague, which she attributed to the good nursing and care of Dorothy. She and her son's wife were not on very good terms.

Mrs. Barford, as a country heiress, had received a boarding-school education, and was very superior to Letty in every respect. Her mother died when she was very young. After her father's death, which happened before she was out of her teens, she had married the bailiff, who farmed the estate for her benefit. A good looking, but totally uneducated man.

He despised what he called book-larning, and suffered his only son to grow up as ignorant and clownish as himself. This had been a deep mortification to Mrs. Barford, but as it had originated in her own imprudence, and she had no one to blame but herself, she wisely held her tongue about it. It was not until after Joe brought home his vulgar wife, that she was practically taught to feel the degradation that her mesalliance had brought upon her once respectable family.

While Dorothy was alone with her that morning, she informed Mrs. Barford of the conversation she had overheard between her son and his wife, and asked her if she knew what it meant?

The old lady was as ignorant of the matter as herself. She was very fond of Dorothy, who, she said, was the only person in the house she could talk to, and was very angry with Letty for having indulged in such base suspicions.

"It is just like her," she said. "n.o.body knows the trial I have had with her, since Joe brought her here to be the plague of my life. Don't heed her, Dorothy. She is a cantankerous creature, who never has a good word to say about any one. I am mistress here, and you shall stay as long as I please, without asking her leave. She did not bear the best of characters when my poor boy was fool enough to marry her. d.i.c.k was born five months after, which brought a scandal upon the house; and it is allers those sort o' folks that are the first to find fault with others who are better and prettier than themselves. She is a poor shiftless thing, and indifferent to every thing but her own comfort."

Much as Dorothy disliked Letty, she thought that little comfort could be extracted from continuous hard work, and the care of five children, the youngest a baby; her very want of method made her labours less effective and more fatiguing.

Without, perhaps, being aware of it, the elder Mrs. Barford was very selfish and exacting; she added a good deal to Letty's domestic drudgery, and never did the least thing herself, beyond continual fault-finding and scolding the children.

Dorothy had tried her best to relieve Letty of half her burthen, and in return had been made a bone of contention between them. Mrs. Barford wanted her to wait entirely upon herself, and was jealous of her doing so much for Letty; and Joe, who endorsed all that his mother did and said, had widened the breach, by admiring Dolly's pretty face, and extolling her superior management.

It was hard to keep the peace between them all.

Dorothy had been so much engrossed by her own troubles, that she had taken little notice of their occasional bickerings; it was only since yesterday that she had imagined that she was in any way the cause of their quarrels,--hitherto she had gone about her work little heeding them. This day in particular, the old lady was cross and hard to please.

The baby cried, wanting its mother, and refused to be fed. The younger boys were troublesome, and the day oppressively hot. Dolly was sadly put about, to attend to them all and cook the dinner. It was a relief when Joe and the men came in from work.

"The beef an' cabbage," Joe said, "wor cooked prime." He wished "the missus wud go out every day, an' leave la.s.s to cook the dinner." The ploom dumplings, however, were not so much to his taste.

"Doll," he said, "do you call e'es suetty things ploom dumplins? I see no plooms in 'em. It dew put me in mind o' a story feather used to tell, o' a stingy missus, who made a pudden for the men in harvest, an' put one ploom in ter middle on't; an' while men wor quareling aboot who shu'd ha' the ploom, a wasp flew away wi' it."

A chorus of haw haws, showed how delighted his fellow-clowns were with farmer Joe's story.

Dorothy felt annoyed, though she laughed with the rest.

"I should have made the dumplings with more fruit in them, master, only Letty cautioned me not to be extravagant with the plums."

"I thought as much," returned Mrs. Barford, rather spitefully. "Letty is fond of saving in a small way. Stopping the cask at the spigot, and letting out at the bunghole, as my father used to say. Take it as a general rule, Dorothy, when men work hard to feed them well."

"The old missus for ever," shouted Nat Green, one of the farm servants.

"She wor a prime hand at a pudden anyhow."

"Ah, ha," said Joe, who happened to be in a very jocular mood, "that reminds me o' a terrible thrashing I once got from mother. I was a youngster about the size of Jack there; we wor in the thick o' the harvest, it wor carting day, an' all hands on the farm mortal busy, mother wanted plooms for the pudden an' ther wor none to send to shop but I, so she calls me to her, an' gees me a shilling.

"'Joe,' she says, 'run down to the village and buy two pund o' plooms o'

Mr. Carter; be quick, for I be in a mighty hurry, and I'll gi' you a ha'penny when you come back.' I wor right glad o' the chance. 'Twor aboot a mile, an' I run'd the whole way, an' bought the plooms.

"Says Mr. Carter, says he, 'doan't eat them by the way.'

"I shu'd never have thought o' that, foreby he had held his tongue. As I coomed whome a hole broke in the paper, an' plooms coomed tomblin out, one arter another; an' I kept yeating an' yeating till thar wor half gone. Dang it, I wor sceared. What shu'd a' do? Mother wor awful in them days aboot stealing, so I sat doon on bank by road side, an' thought it well over, an' by gosh, I hit on a plan I thought wud get me oot o'

sc.r.a.pe."

"Well, feather," called out Master d.i.c.k, opening wide his round blue eyes, "what did a' do? Did granny find it oot?"

"That she did, boy. I opened the parcel, an' bit ev'ry ploom in two."

"You were about as wise then, Joe, as you be now," suggested Mrs.

Barford, who, like the children and Dolly, was listening intensely to the story.

"But what did granny say?" again demanded the boy.

"She asked how they coomed in that state? I pretended I did not know.

That was just the way I got e'm from Mr. Carter.

"'You lie,' quoth she, 'an' are a big fule into the bargain. Come here an' I wull teach you how to tell the truth.'

"An' she took an ashen stick, an' she loomped I, an' thrashed I, till a'

went off limping to bed.

"'Lie thar, Joe, till the morn,' says she, 'an' take your time to find out how many two halves make put together.'

"Lauck, a lauck, how my bones ached! It wor all right, howsomever; I never put my haund to stealing again."

The boys regarded their grandmother with a look of awe. The men returned to the field, and Dorothy busied herself with household matters till the sun went down. She was in a fever of impatience for Letty's return from the town, and worked as hard as she could to keep down her heart and drown thought.

"What keeps Letty," said Mrs. Barford, putting aside her knitting, and going to the door, "she is later than usual. Now she has some one to do her work she will stay gossiping about the town till dark night. When you have milked, Dolly, run to the avenue gate, and see if she be coming."

The round red moon was slowly rising behind the trees, and Joe and his men had finished their supper, and brought the last load of hay into the yard, before Dolly had cleared away and finished milking.

Without staying to take a cup of tea with Mrs. Barford, she tied on her bonnet and ran down to the avenue gate, just as old Captain came lumbering up to it.