“Ah, ma’am, you don’t know him,—­not as I knows him; all the ins and outs and crinks and crannies of him.  I knows him as I does the old apple-trees that I’ve been a-handling for forty year.  There’s a deal of bad wood about them old cankered trees, and some folk say they ain’t worth the ground they stand on; but I know where the sap runs, and when the fruit-blossom shows itself I know where the fruit will be the sweetest.  It don’t take much to kill one of them old trees,—­but there’s life in ’m yet if they be well handled.”

“I’m sure I hope my brother’s life may be long spared to him,” said Mrs Dale.

“Then don’t be taking yourself away, ma’am, into them gashly lodgings at Guestwick.  I says they are gashly for the likes of a Dale.  It is not for me to speak, ma’am, of course.  And I only came up now just to know what things you’d like with you out of the greenhouse.”

“Oh, nothing, Hopkins, thank you,” said Mrs Dale.

“He told me to put up for you the best I could pick, and I means to do it;” and Hopkins, as he spoke, indicated by a motion of his head that he was making reference to the squire.

“We shan’t have any place for them,” said Lily.

“I must send a few, miss, just to cheer you up a bit.  I fear you’ll be very dolesome there.  And the doctor,—­he ain’t got what you can call a regular garden, but there is a bit of a place behind.”

“But we wouldn’t rob the dear old place,” said Lily.

“For the matter of that what does it signify?  T’ squire’ll be that wretched he’ll turn sheep in here to destroy the place, or he’ll have the garden ploughed.  You see if he don’t.  As for the place, the place is clean done for, if you leave it.  You don’t suppose he’ll go and let the Small House to strangers.  T’ squire ain’t one of that sort any ways.”

“Ah me!” exclaimed Mrs Dale, as soon as Hopkins had taken himself off.

“What is it, mamma?  He’s a dear old man, but surely what he says cannot make you really unhappy.”

“It is so hard to know what one ought to do.  I did not mean to be selfish, but it seems to me as though I were doing the most selfish thing in the world.”

“Nay, mamma; it has been anything but selfish.  Besides, it is we that have done it; not you.”

“Do you know, Lily, that I also have that feeling as to breaking up one’s old mode of life of which Hopkins spoke.  I thought that I should be glad to escape from this place, but now that the time has come I dread it.”

“Do you mean that you repent?”

Mrs Dale did not answer her daughter at once, fearing to commit herself by words which could not be retracted.  But at last she said, “Yes, Lily; I think I do repent.  I think that it has not been well done.”

“Then let it be undone,” said Lily.