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 nodded. "Sit you down, lass—come to the fire. I lay it's cowd as Christmas outside, and drivin's a cowd job at t' best o' times. Now maister, if you'll nobbut go into t' parlour, I'll see 'at all's reight—I can't do wi' men about me when I'm busy."

Hepworth laughed, and disappeared into the parlour through a double door. Mally presently carried there a tray loaded with food, and shut the inner door behind her. Elisabeth heard her voice and Hepworth's in conversation. She looked round her. The kitchen in which she sat was a pattern of tidiness. The big table in the side window-place had been scrubbed to the whiteness of snow; the hearthstone was elaborately decorated with designs in potter-mould; the brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece shone like burnished gold. Elisabeth, strange as the place was to her, felt a sense of peace and security in these evidences of the old servant's orderliness.

Mally presently returned from the parlour,