“Haven’t you had enough sleep yet, Lion?” said Anne.  “Look, what a beautiful day it is!  Why, there’s Mary on the road already,” she added, looking over the low gate.

Mary was coming straight down the middle of the road, her black-and-white terrier sniffing on all sides and pulling the cord by which she held him.  When he perceived the presence of the other dog he began to advance by leaps, uttering little yelps between each like a child’s jumping toy.  Lion, with the superiority of a larger dog, raised himself without hurry and advanced to meet the terrier, who excitedly whined and sniffed about him.

“Good morning,” said Anne, “you’re out early.”

“Yes,” replied Mary, standing quite still in the position in which she had halted.  “I came over the fields.  The grass is very wet though.  There’s a mist, surely.”

“Yes, a thick one,” said Anne, “but the sun’s coming through.  Listen to the birds.  Did you ever hear anything like them?”

“I was out collecting the eggs at five o’clock this morning,” returned Mary, “and I think I never heard them so busy.  The earth was all a-hum with them.  They seemed as though they must be listened to, whatever happened.”

Both women stood listening.

“I came this way because I was going to leave my shilling for Lord Axton’s wedding present,” said Mary, after a moment’s silence.

“Did they come and ask you for one?” said Anne.  “I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

“There’s been some grumbling about it,” said Mary.  “I think myself the agent should have left it to those who wanted.  I suppose we could have said No, but nobody likes to.  It isn’t as if people like them want any wedding presents we can give them, and a shilling means a lot to some people.”

“It’s the agent that wants to make a show,” said Anne.  “I think sometimes that if those rich people knew how their wedding presents were procured,” she went on in the stilted manner habitual to her when wishing to express a formal thought, “they would find little pleasure in them.”

“Mr Burton’s given L10,” said Mary.  “They’ll have a good sum.”  She paused, distrustful.

Mary, who was known to all the country side, and who could do nothing secretly, seldom spoke of the affairs of her neighbours.  Whether she was by nature a little taciturn, or whether her blindness, before which so much passed unobserved, which cut her off from the possibility of forming a judgment, had increased her natural modesty and diffidence, she drew back into silence where others were discussed.  But the actual difficulties of living, which she daily and silently surmounted, brought her so closely into touch with reality that she invariably saw, not the fault or its circumstances, but the practical difficulties issuing from it.  But she had unthinkingly stumbled upon the scandal, and she went on, “I was sorry to hear of Jane Evans forgetting herself like she has.”