By six o’clock they were all at breakfast with Lisbeth in a kitchen as clean as she could have made it herself.  The window and door were open, and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood, thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the cottage.  Dinah did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had got ready in the usual way, for she had asked Seth to tell her just what his mother gave them for breakfast.  Lisbeth had been unusually silent since she came downstairs, apparently requiring some time to adjust her ideas to a state of things in which she came down like a lady to find all the work done, and sat still to be waited on.  Her new sensations seemed to exclude the remembrance of her grief.  At last, after tasting the porridge, she broke silence: 

“Ye might ha’ made the parridge worse,” she said to Dinah; “I can ate it wi’out its turnin’ my stomach.  It might ha’ been a trifle thicker an’ no harm, an’ I allays putten a sprig o’ mint in mysen; but how’s ye t’ know that?  The lads arena like to get folks as ’ll make their parridge as I’n made it for ’em; it’s well if they get onybody as ’ll make parridge at all.  But ye might do, wi’ a bit o’ showin’; for ye’re a stirrin’ body in a mornin’, an’ ye’ve a light heel, an’ ye’ve cleaned th’ house well enough for a ma’shift.”

“Makeshift, mother?” said Adam.  “Why, I think the house looks beautiful.  I don’t know how it could look better.”

“Thee dostna know?  Nay; how’s thee to know?  Th’ men ne’er know whether the floor’s cleaned or cat-licked.  But thee’lt know when thee gets thy parridge burnt, as it’s like enough to be when I’n gi’en o’er makin’ it.  Thee’lt think thy mother war good for summat then.”

“Dinah,” said Seth, “do come and sit down now and have your breakfast.  We’re all served now.”

“Aye, come an’ sit ye down—­do,” said Lisbeth, “an’ ate a morsel; ye’d need, arter bein’ upo’ your legs this hour an’ half a’ready.  Come, then,” she added, in a tone of complaining affection, as Dinah sat down by her side, “I’ll be loath for ye t’ go, but ye canna stay much longer, I doubt.  I could put up wi’ ye i’ th’ house better nor wi’ most folks.”

“I’ll stay till to-night if you’re willing,” said Dinah.  “I’d stay longer, only I’m going back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I must be with my aunt to-morrow.”

“Eh, I’d ne’er go back to that country.  My old man come from that Stonyshire side, but he left it when he war a young un, an’ i’ the right on’t too; for he said as there war no wood there, an’ it ‘ud ha’ been a bad country for a carpenter.”