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 the additional cares that the change of circumstance brought to Aram's,) had invited to assist her in arranging what was already arranged, were bustling about the lower apartments, and making matters as they called it "tidy."

"Them flowers look but poor things after all," muttered an old crone, whom our readers will recognise as Dame Darkmans, placing a bowl of exotics on the table. "They does not look nigh so cheerful as them as grows in the open air."

"Tush! Goody Darkmans," said the second gossip. "They be much prettier and finer to my mind; and so said Miss Nelly, when she plucked them last night and sent me down with them. They says there is not a blade o' grass that the Master does not know. He must be a good man to love the things of the field so."

"Ho!" said Dame Darkmans, "ho! when Joe Wrench was hanged for shooting the Lord's keeper, and he mounted the scaffold wid' a nosegay in his hand, he said, in a peevish voice, says he: 'Why does not they give me a tarnation?