dressed, middle-aged workman, with " You
may well smile, my lass; many a one would
smile to have such a bonny face." This
man looked so care-worn that Margaret
could not help giving him an answering
smile, glad to think that her looks, such as
they were, should have had the power to call
up a pleasant thought. He seemed to understand
her acknowledging glance, and a silent
recognition was established between them
whenever the chances of the day brought
them across each other's paths. They had
never exchanged a word; nothing had been
said but that first compliment; yet somehow
Margaret looked upon this man with more
interest than upon any one else in Milton.
Once or twice, on Sundays, she saw him
walking with a girl, evidently his daughter,
and, if possible, still more unhealthy than he
was himself.

One day Margaret and her father had been
as far as the fields that lay around the
town; it was early spring, and she had
gathered some of the hedge and ditch
flowers, dog-violets, lesser celandines, and
the like, with an unspoken lament in her
heart for the sweet profusion of the South.
Her father had left her to go into Milton on
some business; and on the road home she
met her humble friends. The girl looked
wistfully at the flowers, and, acting on a
sudden impulse, Margaret offered them to
her. Her pale blue eyes lightened up as she
took them, and her father spoke for her.

"Thank yo, Miss. Betsy 'll think a deal
o' them flowers; that hoo will; and I shall
think a deal o' yor kindness. Yo're not of
this country, I reckon?"

"No! " said Margaret, half sighing. " I
come from the South—from Hampshire," she
continued, a little afraid of wounding his
consciousness of ignorance if she used a name
which he did not understand.

"That's beyond London, I reckon? And
I come fra' Burnley-ways, and forty mile to
th' north. And yet, yo see, North and
South has both met and made kind o' friends
in this big smoky place."

Margaret had slackened her pace to walk
alongside of the man and his daughter, whose
steps were regulated by the feebleness of the
latter. She now spoke to the girl, and there
was a sound of tender pity in the tone of her
voice as she did so that went right to the
heart of the father.

''I am afraid you are not very strong."

"No," said the girl, " nor never will be."

"Spring is coming," said Margaret, as if to
suggest pleasant hopeful thoughts.

"Spring nor summer will do me good,"
said the girl quietly.

Margaret looked up at the man, almost
expecting some contradiction from him, or at least
some remark that would modify his daughter's
utter hopelessness. But, instead, he added—

"I'm afeared hoo speaks truth. I'm afeared
hoo's too far gone in a waste."

"I shall have a spring where I'm borne
to, and flowers, and amaranths, and shining
robes besides."

"Poor lass, poor lass! " said her father in a
low tone. " I'm none so sure o' that; but
it's a comfort to thee, poor lass, poor lass.
Poor father! it'll be soon."

Margaret was shocked by his words—
shocked but not repelled; rather attracted
and interested.

"Where do you live? I think we must be
neighbours, we meet so often on this road."

"We put up at nine, Frances Street, second
turn to th' left at after yo've past th'
Goulden Dragon."

"And your name? I must not forget
that."

"I'm none ashamed of my name. It's
Nicholas Higgins. Hoo's called Bessy Hig-
gins. Whatten yo' asking for?"

Margaret was surprised at this last
question, for at Helstone it would have been an
understood thing, after the inquiries she had
made, that she intended to come and call
upon any poor neighbour whose name and
habitation she had asked for.

"I thought—I meant to come and see you.'
She suddenly felt rather shy of offering the
visit, without having any reason to give for
her wish to make it, beyond a kindly interest
in a stranger. It seemed all at once to take
the shape of an impertinence on her part;
she read this meaning too in the man's eyes.

"I'm none so fond of having strange folk
in my house." But then relenting, as he saw
her heightened colour, he added, " Yo're a
foreigner, as one may say, and maybe don't
know many folk here, and yo've given my
wench here flowers out of yo'r own hand;—
yo may come if yo like."

Margaret was half-amused, half-nettled at
this answer. She was not sure if she would
go where permission was given so like a
favour conferred. But when they came to
the town into Frances Street, the girl stopped
a minute, and said,

"Yo'll not forget yo're to come and see us."

"Aye, aye," said the father, impatiently,
"hoo'll come. Hoo's a bit set up now, because
hoo thinks I might ha' spoken more civilly;
but hoo'll think better on it, and come. I can
read her proud bonny face like a book. Come
along, Bess; there's the mill bell ringing."

Margaret went home, wondering at her
new friends, and smiling at the man's
insight into what had been passing in her mind.
From that day Milton became a brighter
place to her. It was not the long, bleak
sunny days of spring, nor yet was it that
time was reconciling her to the town of her
habitation. It was that in it she had found
a human interest.

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

THE day after this meeting with Higgins
and his daughter, Mr. Hale came upstairs
into the little drawing-room at an unusual