angel, with a crystal sounding titter, "'tis as good as the heroine in a
play. Whom were you called for, child?"

"My mother, ma'am," said Loveday, and now her cheek had ceased to burn
and looked pale, but she raised her eyes and confronted the vision
steadily.

Mrs. Lear coughed.

"I declare I should like to do a watercolour drawing of you, Loveday,"
went on Miss Le Pettit, "what do you say? Will you come up to the Manor
one day and let me paint your portrait?"

Loveday had not a notion what that process might be, but had she taken
it to be the blackest witchcraft (as she very likely would if she saw
it) she would still not have blenched. Her eye lightened, some instinct
told her that had she been as all the other girls, the Cherries and
Primroses, this wonderful lady would not have looked twice at her. At
last her singularity was standing her in good stead. Confidence came to
her, even a feeling of slight scorn for the world she knew, a feeling,
indeed, to which she was not altogether a stranger, but which up till
now she had stifled in affright at its presumption.

"What do you say, Mrs. Lear?" asked Miss Le Pettit, turning with her
charming condescension to the old woman, whom, after all, she was merely
visiting on a little matter of a recipe for elderflower-water, "what do
you say? Would she not look picturesque with an orange kerchief over her
head and a basket of fruit in her arms, as a young street-vendor?"

"She would certainly look outlandish, ma'am," was all Mrs. Lear could
manage.

Loveday's thoughts flew of a sudden to the ribands she had disturbed in
Cherry's lap, and for the first time in her life, till now so proudly
above such matters in its aloofness, she yearned over fineries. If such
as those could admit her into the company of such as this! She thought
enviously of that pale pink, even of the yellows and reds she had seen
in Bugletown, since such deep tones seemed to the taste of this
wonderful creature.

But Miss Le Pettit, still staring at her, changed her note.

"I was wrong," she exclaimed, "that face needs no gaudy hues, those
white cheeks need nothing but that red mouth to set them off, and that
black hair. She should be white, all white, should she not, Mrs. Lear?
A tragic bride from the south, languishing in our cold land. 'Twould
make a fine subject for a painting, though I fear beyond my brush.
I never can get my faces to look as sad as I could wish them to."

There was something engaging and almost childlike about the heiress as
she spoke those words, but recollecting herself she resumed:

"Never mind the portrait, but I vow I will have you for my attendant at
the Flora, that I will. Now, Mrs. Lear, you shall not protest, I always
have my way when I set my heart on a thing, you know. I am going to
dance in the Flora this year, 'tis a charming rural custom, and the
gentry should help to preserve it. Besides, my name is Flora, so I
am doubly bound. And this child shall be my maid; she will be a rare
contrast to me, I being chestnut and she so foreign looking. It would
be indiscreet if I were to dance with a gentleman--you know what the
gossips are--but if I am partnered by an attendant maid 'twill be very
different."

"Ma'am ..." from the scandalised Mrs. Lear, "if you are set on having
a village girl ... there are many from good homes, respectable girls.
Not that I've anything to say against this poor child, God knows, but
her mother, ma'am.... I assure you 'tis impossible."

Miss Le Pettit, who guessed very well the sort of tale Mrs. Lear's
delicacy spared her, laughed the matter off.

"It shall be as I say, Mrs. Lear, I can afford to be above these things.
You shall dance with me, Loveday. You must have a white frock, of
course, but I suppose you have a Sunday frock? Quite a simple thing,
the simpler the better, and a white sash of satin riband. Don't forget.
I shall expect to see you waiting for me at the Flora."

And Miss Le Pettit rose, having carried her freak of sensibility on long
enough, and sweeping past Loveday with a dazzling smile, was accompanied
to the front door by Mrs. Lear, and after standing poised for a moment
against the sunny verdure beyond, took wing with a flutter of white
taffetas and was gone.

Loveday was left with that most dangerous of all passions--the passion
for an idea. Though she was ignorant of the fact, it was not Miss Le
Pettit she adored, it was beauty; not silk underskirts that rustled
in her ear, but the music of the spheres; a new ideal she saw not in
the angelic visitant, but in herself. She, too, would be all white and
dazzling, was accounted worthy to follow in the same steps, were it
but in those of a dance. She made the common mistake of a lover--she
imagined she was in love with another human being, while in reality she
was in love with those feelings in herself which that other had evoked.

Never did aspiring saint of old, impelled by ecstasy, cling closer to a
crucifix as the symbol of the loved one than did Loveday to that notion
of the white garb which must be hers. It was, indeed, a symbol to her,
the symbol of everything she had unwittingly craved and starved for,
of everything she had, could not but feel she had, in herself which was
lacked by those who jeered at her. And, though she knew it not, nor
would have understood it, she was a symbol-lover, than which there is no
form of lover more dangerous in life--or more endangered by the chances
of it. For he who loves another human being gives his heart in fee, but
he who loves an idea gives his soul.



CHAPTER IV: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS




Chapter IV

IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS


Loveday bore home the milk in a maze of bliss, and staying not for her
supper, for no hunger of the body was upon her, turned and went out
again into the glow of the evening. Had she been as full of sensibility
as a young lady she would have wandered straight away from Upper Farm,
forgotten the milk, and not thought of it again, till, returning with
the upgetting of the moon, her aunt had met her with vulgar reproaches.
What a charming scene could then have been staged, of sensitive genius
misunderstood by coarse-grained labour; of vision-drunken youth berated
by undreaming age! But she was not a young lady, and could derive no
felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the
urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest
that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction. Therefore
Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her
exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the
commonplaces of routine without her perceiving the incongruity which
would have jarred on one of a finer upbringing.

She placed the milk on the table, set out the bread and soaked
pilchards, found what was left of the cheese, and went hastily forth
lest her aunt should stay her.

She was bound for the little wood that lay in a fold of the moorland
above the sea. This wood was to her what a City of Refuge was to the
Hebrews of the Old Testament, and, like them, she fled to it when the
world's opinion of what was fit had proved at variance with her own.
To-night she went to it not for sanctuary from others, but to commune
with herself--in truth, for the first time she went not because of what
she had left but because of what she would find. Her bare heels were
winged along the road.

The wood lay lapped in the shadow that the western ridge had cast on it
an hour earlier than the rest of the world's bedtime, ever since the
trees had been there to receive the chill caress, and that was for many
a hundred years. Old Madgy swore that even in her young day the small
folk had still held their revels on the mossy slopes amongst the fanlike
roots, and who knows what larger folk had not fled there to wanton more
sweetly than in close cottages, or, like Loveday, to play the more
easily with their thoughts? The wood alone knew, and it held its
memories as closely as it held the thousand tiny lives confided to its
care; the bright-eyed shrew-mice that poked quivering noses through the
litter of last year's leaves, the birds that nested behind the
clustering twigs, the slow-worms that slipped along its grassy ditches.

Loveday turned off from the road and approached the wood from the west,
pausing when she reached the smooth grey boulders that were piled along
the ridge. She stood there gazing out over the smiling champaign, pale
and verdant from the farthest rim to the treetops that made as it were a
sea of faint green at her feet, for already in that soft clime the twigs
were misty with young leaf, and on the willows the velvety pearl-hued
ovals had begun to deck themselves with a delicate powdering of gold,
while from the hazels beside her the yellow lambs' tails hung still as
tiny pennants in the evening air. The gold of nature was as yet more
vivid than her green, which still showed tentative, enquiring of April
what of betrayal might not lie in the careless plaits of her garment.
To Loveday, high on her rock, between the gold of the sky and the gold
of the blossom, it seemed that April must of a certainty stay as fair
as this and lead to as bright a May, when that vision of her new self
should become a yet brighter reality. She was confident of April because
she was confident of life, lapped in an aureate glow that seemed to
suffuse the very air she drew into her lungs so that it intoxicated her
like the breath of a diviner ether from Olympian heights. She had seen
beauty, and lo! it had been revealed to her not as a thing apart and
unattainable, but as a quality within herself. Her "difference" had
become a blazon, not a branding.

Lying down on her rock, she told over with the rapture of a devotee the
divine excellencies of Flora Le Pettit; her radiance, her swinging,
shining curls, the wings that spread from her fair arms, the light that
gleamed on her bright brow and in her glancing eyes, but it was not
Flora, but Loveday, who danced before her mind's eye in white raiment,
and held the sorrows of the South in her eyes and the joy of youth on
her lips. Flora was the excuse for that new Loveday, as the beloved is
ever the excuse for the raptures transmuting the lover. Even thus do we
worship in our Creator the excellence of His handiwork, and one would
think that to be alive is act of praise enough to satisfy the most
exigent deity. Flora had called Loveday to life, and Loveday repaid her
with a worship of that which she had awakened, the highest compliment
the devout can pay, would the theologians but acknowledge it.

The sun slipped slower down the field of the sky, now a pale green as
delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself
up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her
slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below
was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its
fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness
under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she
was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was
strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare
occasions comes to all--the certainty of being immune to danger--which
is of all sensations vouchsafed to mortals the most godlike.

She rose to her feet, and swinging herself down from the rock, began the
descent, ledge by ledge, to the shadows below. A last spring, and she
was standing on the dark gold of drifted leaves, that rose about her
ankles with a dry little rustling. It was the wood's caress of greeting,
and she did not reflect that it was also the kisses of the dead.

Indeed, she clapped her hands in the rush of strength she felt, both in
her young muscles and her leaping spirit, and stood proudly listening
to the echo dying away, unaffrighted. She was young and strong and
beautiful; life, not dead leaves, lay at her feet. She was different,
and in her difference lay power, she was at last herself, Loveday ...
she was Loveday, Loveday ... Loveday...

She darted hither and thither through the wood, noting with a pleasure
keener than ever before how soft and sleek the moss was to her feet, how
silky the flank of the beech to her leaning cheek, how sweetly sharp the
intimate evening note of the birds.

And she was quite unfitted to be the goddess of these rustic beauties,
for all her mind could feel in that softness and sleekness and clear
calling was their alikeness to artificiality. She felt thin slippers
on her feet, rubbed an ecstatic cheek against the sheen of satin, and
in her ears echoed no diviner music than the Tol-de-rol Tol-de-rol
of the Bugletown band on Flora Day. Save in her sincerity, she was as
artificial a goddess as ever graced a Versailles Fête Champêtre. What
were leaf and bird to her but the stuff of her life, whereas white satin
gleamed with the shimmer of the very heavens!

Hers was not, it is true, the milliner's paradise of Cherry and
Primrose, but it was one into which she could only penetrate fitly
clad. What wonder then that, brought up without any tutoring in the
excellencies of Nature, she should display the sad lack of true feeling
so deplored in her later by that nice arbiter of taste, Miss Flora Le
Pettit?



CHAPTER V: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE
WHITE GOWN




Chapter V

IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS THE WHITE GOWN


With morning came thoughts of the practical side of the business and,
the worst of her daily duties performed, Loveday ascended to her chamber
to examine the scanty contents of her small oaken chest. It was a
sea-chest, legacy from her roving father, who had given it to her
mother, and often enough had Aunt Senath expressed scruples about
allowing her to keep a gift obtained so godlessly. Perhaps the fact that
it was a good chest and better than anything she could have bought had
something to do with Aunt Senath's complaisance in permitting it to
remain. Perhaps Loveday's fierce look in defence of it was not without
influence also. The chest stayed in the little attic room, and made of
it, to Loveday's eyes, a place peculiarly her own, and rich because of
its associations. There was something about the chest, its dark polish
and coarse carving, that even led her to think hopefully of its poor
contents.

She crouched beside it now, upon her heels, and lifting the lid, gazed
expectantly at what was revealed.

After all, it did not look so bad, just a level surface of white linen...

But, when she lifted it out, and all the yellow of age was revealed in
the full gathers of the skirt, a shade passed over Loveday's spirit.
How small and tight the bodice looked, how skimpy even the plaits of the
skirt for the present modes ... yet it had been a good linen in its day,
there was no doubt of that, this frock that had been stitched for her
mother's wedding gown.

For perhaps he had always been coming back to marry her, perhaps only
their young blood and eager hearts beating so strongly within them had
made the beat of wedding bells seem at first too slight a sound to catch
their absorbed attention.... So Loveday the elder had always known,
in spite of the sneers of the neighbours. So Loveday the younger had
maintained to carping girl-critics, though in her inmost heart she had
never been able to feel it mattered so vastly, for half the girls she
knew would have been in her predicament had their fathers been cut
off untimely. She knew it was not that she was born out of wedlock,
a misfortune that might happen to anyone, which oppressed her youth,
but the fact of her father having been a foreigner, and of that she
was fiercely resolved to be proud. Neither mother nor father had she
ever known, but the instinct of generous youth is ever to defend the
oppressed, and with her defence had love sprung in Loveday's heart.
Therefore, even with her sensation of disappointment at the sight of the
yellowed linen, there was reverence and tenderness in her touch as she
laid the gown across her narrow bed.

She ripped off the coarse blue wrapper that enfolded her, and stood
revealed in her little flannel under-bodice and linsey-woolsey petticoat
of striped red and black, her thin girlish arms and young bosom making
her look more childish than she did when fully clothed. She held the
gown above her head and struggled into it. Her pale little face was red
when she poked it triumphantly through the narrow opening and finally
settled the neck, with its ruffled cambric frilling, round her throat,
and pulled the puff sleeves as far as they would go down her arms in a
vain attempt to make them conceal her red young girl's elbows. She could
only see a small portion of herself at a time in the little mirror, yet
that small portion, in spite of the skimpiness and yellowness of the
gown, pleased her eye.

For her dark tints were set off by the creamy folds, her slight shape
revealed by the tight bodice, even her bare feet, which some fine
prompting had made her wash carefully lest they should shame this essay,
looked small and graceful beneath the full folds.

But she could not dance in the Flora unshod, and so once again she bent
to the sea-chest, and withdrew her only pair of shoes, bought for her in
a generous moment last Michaelmas by Aunt Senath. She pulled on her
Sunday pair of white cotton stockings, and then the stout shoes. They
still fitted, and to her country eye looked well enough. She examined
herself bit by bit in the mirror, from her smooth black head to her
smooth black feet, and all the faintly yellowed linen that curved in and
swelled out between.

She was fair to look upon, not so much the mirror as her own awakened
consciousness told her that. She was meet to dance with Miss Le Pettit
at the Flora, could she but obtain one thing more--the white satin sash.



CHAPTER VI: IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO
OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND




Chapter VI

IN WHICH LOVEDAY ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND


With a high heart Loveday began her quest for the work which was to earn
for her the coveted white satin sash. She had but three weeks in which
to make a matter of several shillings, and this meant that she must sell
every moment of the time which was hers when her duties about her aunt's
were discharged for the day. In the morning she was busy with cleaning
and cooking till almost mid-day, and in the evenings she had the milk to
fetch, but in the afternoons she could be sure of a few hours if Aunt
Senath did not guess she wanted them for herself and invent tasks. On
Mondays, of course, the washing kept her all day at the tub, and on
Fridays at the mangle, on Saturdays there was the baking of the bread,
while Thursday, being market day, she was supposed to keep house while
Aunt Senath went in to Bugletown--a task that slut of a woman was too
fond of for its chances of gossip to send her niece in her stead. On
Thursdays Loveday was wont to stay in and see to the mending, but she
reflected that, by sitting up in her bed at night to darn and patch by
the light of the wick that floated in a cup of fish-oil, she might take
charge of some neighbour's children on that day instead and Aunt Senath
be none the wiser. Loveday had a sad lack of principle, doubtless an
heritage from her heathen father.

On the afternoons of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some
house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly
wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets
put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the
washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from the
gorse-bushes.

Then there were always odd things to be done, such as running errands,
at which she hoped to earn some pence here and there. The white riband
seemed no impossible fantasy to Loveday when she started on her quest.

She went first to visit old Mrs. Lear, at Upper Farm, for no one had
shown such a kindly front to the girl in all the village as she. Loveday
started out for the milk half-an-hour earlier than was her wont so that
she might have time to discuss her hopes with the farmer's wife, and
this time she did not meet young Mrs. Lear or her friend Cherry on the
way. But she did come upon both Mrs. Lears in the big kitchen, the
younger seated in the armchair in front of the fire and the elder
anxiously regarding her. Primrose had been fretful ever since hearing
from her mother-in-law of Miss Le Pettit's visit of the day before,
and of the unaccountable interest the heiress had shown in that faggot
of a Loveday, and by now her fretfulness had assumed the size of an
indisposition. In vain did Mrs. Lear try and cosset and comfort her with
potions both hot and cool; Primrose knew well that beneath the kindness
of the farmer's wife lurked the feeling that it was not for one in her
station to indulge in such vapours as might well befit the gentry, and
that she would be cured sooner by taking a broom to the best carpet than
by sitting and keeping the fire warm. Primrose sulked, and even handsome
Willie, leaning by the window, wanting to be away yet dreading the
outburst did he move, could not persuade his wife that nothing ailed her
but too much idleness. Neither, though to their robust health it would
have seemed so, would it have been all the truth, for Primrose was
taking her condition more hardly than most girls who have had the good
fortune to wed with a prosperous young farmer, and the thought that she
would not be able to dance in the procession with the rest of the world
at the Flora had for some time past embittered her. To enter the house,
after her anger with Loveday and the flash of fear that the strange
half-foreign girl had filled her with, only to find that the great Miss
Le Pettit had offered that very girl to dance with her ... this was
poisonous fare indeed for one in the discontented mood of Primrose Lear.
The heaviness of her mind matched with that of her body as she hunched
over the fire.

Sight of Loveday, a Loveday oddly changed from that of the day earlier,
did not ease her sickness; the light in Loveday's eye, the fresh
exhilaration of her step--she, who was wont to slip along with so much
of quiet aloofness--stung the other girl anew. Loveday greeted Mrs. Lear
eagerly before she saw that Primrose was sitting half-hidden by the
wings of the big chair, her face, paler than its wont, in shadow, pallid
like a face seen through still water. Then she saw also handsome Willie,
dark against the small square panes of the window, the April sun gilding
the curve of his ruddy cheek and making the pots of red geraniums along
the sill blaze as brightly as the beautiful blossoms of painted wax
that, under their glass shade, held an example of neat perfection up
to Nature.

Willie nodded at Loveday with a trifle less of sulkiness in his manner,
took a step forward and relapsed once more. A little silence seemed to
catch them all, broken by good Mrs. Lear saying:

"You'm early to-day, Loveday. Milken's not over yet."

"I'm come to see you a moment, if 'tes possible," said Loveday, some of
her shining confidence already fallen from her, she knew not why.

"Well," said Primrose spitefully, guessing her presence would embarrass
Loveday, "Mrs. Lear's here and I daresay'll speak to 'ee. Can't be any
secret from me, of course, whatever 'tes."

Mrs. Lear, suddenly sorry for Loveday, although Primrose on entering the
day before had told her a tale that had angered her, said:

"Come into dairy, Loveday; you can tell me what 'tes while I see to your
aunt's bit of butter."

Loveday followed her into the cool dairy, where on the scrubbed
white wood shelves the great red earthen pans stood in rows holding
their thick crinkled cream, which Loveday never saw without a thought
of awe for her mother's miracle, and the waves that had surged over
her father's head. Thought of it now restored her sense of her own
power--the cream was ever for her a symbol of divine interposition, and
if her own parents had been found worthy of such a sign, why should not
she too have that something apart and strong which forced signs from the
very heavens, that something apart which indeed she could not but feel
sure she possessed, never with such a gladness in the certainty until
the miraculous yesterday?

Eagerly she unfolded her plans to Mrs. Lear, her words falling forth in
a rush as hurried as a moorland stream after rain, yet as clear too, and
as she spoke of her hopes and plans her black eyes scanned Mrs. Lear's
face more in faith than anxiety. But Mrs. Lear wore a strange look that
to one less eager than the girl would have shown as pity.

"Softly, Loveday, softly," she said at last, "while I see if I can
get to the rights of this. You want to earn money for yourself this
next month to buy your white riband with. Have 'ee thought 'tes an
extravagant purchase for a maid like you, who should be putten any
money into warm flannel or a pair of good boots?"

"I don't want boots, Mrs. Lear, I don't want nothing on the earth but my
satin sash so I can dance with her in the Flora. I want it more than to
save my soul, that I do; I'll go through anything to get it. I'll work
like ten maids for 'ee and for anyone else that'll have me, so as I can
dance in the Flora..."

"Hush, hush," cried the good woman, justly scandalised by such
unbalanced ravings from a maid of fifteen who should have had nothing
but modesty in her mouth; "you mustn't say such wicked things or I can't
stay here and listen to en."

Fear attacked Loveday, not for her own impious words, but lest she had
shocked Mrs. Lear past helping.

"Mrs. Lear," she said urgently, "I don't mean any wickedness, but indeed
I can't sufficiently tell 'ee what it means to me to get my length of
riband and dance in the Flora come May. I do believe I'll die if I
don't. I don't know how to find words to tell 'ee, but 'tes more to me
than a white riband and a shaking of feet down Bugletown streets, 'tes
my life, I do believe ..." She added no word of Flora Le Pettit, you
perceive, but got a secret joy from being able to use her name thus
unreproved in mention of the dance ... and who that has been a lover
will not understand this?

"I would have had 'ee up here to help now that Primrose is so wisht,"
replied Mrs. Lear doubtfully, "but simmingly only yesterday you had
words, and indeed it was ill done of you, Loveday Strick, towards one
in her condition, as you do very well knaw."

Loveday drooped her head. Idle to protest to Mrs. Lear that she had not
been the first in fault. She waited breathless, the beating of her heart
almost choking her. Mrs. Lear went on.

"If only Primrose could be made to overlook it, then I'll have 'ee and
welcome, Loveday, and pay you a florin a week too, which would soon add
up to enough. I'd be glad for 'ee to stay on after the Flora too, for
Primrose's time'll be near."

Loveday had no interest in what happened after the dance. Life would
be all golden ever after, something wonderful and new would certainly
begin; it was to mark the great division in her life, but gratitude and
the caution born of years of slights held her silent on that subject to
the good Mrs. Lear.

"Wait 'ee here," Mrs. Lear bade her, and herself went back into the
kitchen. She was gone some minutes, that to Loveday dragged as weeks,
though when she reappeared Loveday felt that the time of waiting had
gone too soon, and she wished for it to begin once more, so much she
dreaded to ask what had been said. Mrs. Lear spared her the need for
questioning.

"'Tes no manner of use, Loveday," she said, "Primrose won't hear of it,
and being as she is, I can't contrairy her."

Loveday felt the futility of argument, and, indeed, in the violent
reaction that attacks such ardent natures, she felt too numb to make the
attempt even had she wished. She stood staring at Mrs. Lear with her
eyes dark in her pale face and the first presage of defeat in her heart.



CHAPTER VII: IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL
ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND




Chapter VII

IN WHICH LOVEDAY STILL ESSAYS TO OBTAIN THE WHITE SATIN RIBAND


It were a weary task to chronicle all the ways trodden by Loveday during
the three weeks that followed her visit to Upper Farm, and yet, even so,
it would not be as weary as was the treading of them to that still
ardent though fearful girl. Hers grew to be a dread that would have
seemed to a spectator disproportionate indeed--for what can one heart
know of the sickness of another's, of its hurried beating when hope
beckons, of its numb slackening when hope fails? How swift to Loveday
seemed the relentless patter of the days past her questing feet, that,
run hither and thither as she would, yet could not keep pace with Time's
urgency! How slow to Loveday seemed the ticking of each moment, since
each held hope and fear full-globed, as in bubbles that rise and rise
only to burst into the empty air! So each moment rose, rounded, to meet
Loveday, held, and broke, till her mind was but a daze which confounded
speed with slowness, till she thought the future would never be the
present and found perpetually that it was the past.

After her failure with Mrs. Lear it occurred to Loveday to go where she
should have gone in the first place--whither she might have gone had
not some irk of conscience whispered her that her purpose was all too
worldly--to the wife of the Vicar, Mrs. Veale. This Mrs. Veale was the
good lady who had stood sponsor for Loveday on that day when Aunt Senath
had perforce to blazon her sister's shame at the font. Ever since that
day Mrs. Veale had done her duty by Loveday without fail, instructing
her in the catechism regularly and occasionally presenting her with the
clothing of Miss Letitia Veale--who was a couple of years older than
Loveday--when the garments were outgrown and when they were suitable.
Mrs. Veale was too thoughtful a Christian to give Loveday artificial
flowers or silken petticoats unfitted to her station, but flannels,
thickened by so much washing that Saint Anthony of Egypt himself could
not have divined a female within their folds, were always forthcoming
to protect the orphan girl from wintry winds.

It was no day for flannel when Loveday knocked--with the timidity that
always assailed her, to her own annoyance, when she was about to see her
godmother--on the back door of the Vicarage. She heard her own voice,
robbed of its warm eagerness, asking of the stout cook whether Mrs.
Veale could see her for a minute. The cook sent the housemaid to the
Vicar's lady with the request, and Loveday stood in the large, sunny
kitchen smelling the strange rich foods preparing for the four o'clock
dinner. There was butcher's meat, she could smell that (she had tasted
it at the harvest feast at Upper Farm, where it was provided for the
labourers once a year), and there was a sweet pudding that she could see
stirred together in a big white bowl, a pudding that smelt of sweetness
like a posy. A noisy fly, the first of his kind, buzzed over the plate
where the empty eggshells lay beside the bowl, and from them crawled to
the scattered sugar that sparkled carelessly upon the rim. Loveday, of
old, would have had a second's envy of the fly that could thus browse on
what smelt so good; now the fine aromas affected her nostrils merely as
incense might have those of her papist father--as the savour of the
great house where dwelt those to be propitiated. For upon Mrs. Veale she
now felt hope was fastened; it was from her almost sacred hands that
salvation would flow. Fear and expectation took Loveday by the throat,
so stifling her that the wide kitchen, the stout blue-print-clad cook,
the bright pots and pans, the leaping flames, the savoury odours and the
buzzing of the fly, all blended together before her dizzied eyes.

The figure of the housemaid, crisp in white and black, entered
steadyingly, and with her voice, saying that the mistress would see
Loveday Strick in the morning-room, the flow of the kitchen ebbed and
subsided. Loveday followed the white and black through the long, narrow
hall, where the fox's mask grinned at her from above the fanlight of the
door, to the presence of the Vicar's wife.

Mrs. Veale was a personable lady, with a high and narrow brow, and a
penetrating eye that few in the village could evade if they had aught
upon their conscience. It was said, indeed, that she was better than
a curate to her husband, for she could pass where a man could not
in delicacy have gone, and few were the maids, and fewer still the
housewives, who had not benefited by her counsel. She fixed that eye
benevolently upon Loveday now; the lady stately in her black silk, the
locket containing the hair of her departed parent, one-time a canon of
Exeter, lying upon her matronly bosom; the girl awkward in her homespun
wrapper, her feet fearful of standing upon the flowered carpet.

"Come in, Loveday," said Mrs. Veale kindly.

Loveday advanced a step and dropped her curtsey, but not a word could
she say to explain her visit.

"What do you want to see me about?" asked Mrs. Veale briskly--for she
was much busied in good works, and had no time to give over what was
needful to each of them.

"If you please, ma'am, I want work," said Loveday.

Mrs. Veale looked her approval on hearing this most praiseworthy of the
few sentences fit for use of the lower classes. Even when there is no
work to be had such sentiments should be encouraged, and without them
she never unloosed that charity which, when the supply of work failed,
she exercised for the good of her parishioners' bodies and her own soul.

Loveday felt the approval, and her heart took wings to the heaven of
certain hope. Indeed, had Loveday but had the sense of what was fitting
to tell the Vicar's lady, she might have attained what she wanted, but
hope, like despair, ever made Loveday heady.

"What work do you want?" asked Mrs. Veale. "I should have sent you out
to service long ago, but I knew your aunt needed you at home. Has she
sent you?"

"No, ma'am," answered Loveday, "I came of myself. I want work I can do
in my spare time, when Aunt Senath don't need me."

So far all was well; the scheme sounded fit for encouragement by the
Church, ever anxious for the welfare of even her humblest children.
Mrs. Veale gave thought to her boots and knives ... no, the gardener's
boy did them, and he was being prepared for confirmation and must not be
unsettled. The mending ... that was done by the housemaid in her spare
time, superintended by Mrs. Veale herself, and it would not be fair to
the girl to leave her with idle hands for Satan's use when they could
be employed instead upon sheets and stockings. The washing ... the
housemaid's mother came to do that, glad to do so at a reasonable price
for the opportunity of seeing how her daughter prospered from week to
week under such care as Mrs. Veale bestowed on all the maids whom she
trained. The spring cleaning ... a girl who did not know the ways of the
house would make work instead of saving it. Yet Mrs. Veale felt, as a
Christian woman, that it was her duty to encourage Loveday even at the
cost of her own china. She resolved to do so.

"Many people would not help you, Loveday," she said, "for it is
very difficult to find work suddenly without upsetting the ways of a
household, but you are my god-daughter, and so I have always taken a
special interest in you. My spring-cleaning is not till May this year,
as then the Vicar goes away to stay with his lordship, the Bishop of
Exeter, and I will have you here under my own eye. You will not be of
much assistance at first, but if you are willing and do as you are told
you will be able to learn."

At the mention of the month of May the wings of Loveday's heart folded
once more and let her heart fall like a stone, then opened in a
fluttering attempt to save it.

"What--what time in May, ma'am?" she asked. Perhaps it would be the
first week in that month and all would yet be well, since the Flora was
held upon the eighth.

At Mrs. Veale's next words the wings moulted away, and the bare quills
left Loveday's heart prone and defenceless.

"Not till the second week," said Mrs. Veale, "for the Vicar wishes to
stay till the Flora, as we are permitting Miss Letitia to dance in the
procession this year, and naturally he wishes to be there. The Vicar
feels that these old innocent customs must not be allowed to fall into
disuse."

"Ah!" cried Loveday, "'tis no good to me!"