"Who had stolen her?" asked Mary anxiously.

"They heard later that a fair-skinned child had been seen with gypsies on the road to London, but that was not till long afterwards. For years the mother heard no news of her, and wandered up and down the country with the one little clog in her hand seeking her: she felt sure she should know her again, though all this time the child was growing up, and was a baby no longer. But the mother never quite despaired, and she had a feeling that somehow the little clog would help her in her search: on its wooden sole, as well as on that of the lost one, she had scratched two letters--BM.

"So the time went on and on. It was seven long years after she had lost her child that the mother heard of a situation in a place called Wensdale, and went there to live. Now you can tell me the mother's name."

"Why, of course, it must be Maggie," said Jackie, who had been staring fixedly at Mary for the last two minutes with his mouth wide open; "and that's why she caught hold of my shoe and--"

"Let me finish the story," said Mrs Chelwood, "and then you shall talk about it as much as you like. In this very place there was a little girl living at the vicarage who had been left in the garden there by gypsies seven years ago. She had a funny little shoe with her when she was found, and had kept it ever since; and now, perhaps, you know who that little girl is."

"It's me!" cried Mary, starting up--"it's my shoe--and I saw the letters--and I don't belong to the gypsies after all, and--"

"My dear," said the squire, putting his head in at the door, "I'm too muddy to come in, but you'll all be glad to hear that we've caught those rascals and they're all in Dorminster jail."

Mrs Chelwood hurried out of the room, and the children all began to talk at once, to ask questions, to exclaim, to wonder if the gypsies would be hanged, and so on. Presently, however, it was found that Mary had strange and dreadful experiences to relate. A silence fell upon the others until she had finished, and then they looked at her with a sort of awe.

"So our chickens won't be stolen," she repeated, "and that dreadful Seraminta can't take me away."

"It's a tremendously puzzling thing though," said Jackie reflectively; "here you've got two mothers, you see, and two names. How will you manage, and where will you live?"

"She's only got one _real_ mother," cried Patrick.

"And one _real_ name," said Jennie.

"And shall you mind," continued Jackie seriously, "about not being grand? You're not Lady anything, you see, but just 'Betty.'"

"I don't want to be grand any more," said Mary earnestly, "and I don't mind anything else one bit, now I don't belong to the gypsies."

"How glad your last mother--no, I mean your first mother--must be," said Agatha, "that someone made you that Pair of Clogs."

This was only one of many and many a conversation amongst the children on the same subject during several following weeks. And what a wonderful subject it was! Surely never had such a strange thing happened in a quiet village as this discovery of Mary's mother, and as to Mary herself, she was now surrounded by an air of romance which was more interesting than any story-book. If she could only have remembered a little about that time she pa.s.sed with the gypsies! But none of Jackie's earnest appeals to "try hard" produced any results, for all that part of her life was wiped as clean out of her memory as when one washes marks off a slate with a sponge. It was all gone, and when she looked back it was not Seraminta and Perrin and the donkey-cart she saw, but the kind faces of Mr and Mrs Vallance and her happy, pleasant home at the vicarage. And yet, though her earliest recollections were of these, she did not in truth belong to them; they were not her people, and sunny Wensdale was not her place; Maggie was her mother, and cold, grey Haworth on the hillside was her real home. It was, as Jackie had said, a most puzzling thing, and the important question arose--would Mary have to go away? It was wildly irritating to be shut out from all the talks and conferences which were always going on now between Mary's two mothers and Mrs Chelwood. The children felt that it was more their concern than anyone's, but they were told nothing, and the air of the school-room was so full of excitement and curiosity that Fraulein was in despair. The slightest noises in the house during lesson time now seemed to carry deep meaning--perhaps only a bell ringing, or some one shutting the door of mother's sitting-room, but it was enough to make Jackie put down his slate-pencil and look at Mary with an awestruck and impressive gaze. She would give an answering nod of intelligence, and Patrick and Jennie, not to be left out in the cold, would at once begin to nod rapidly at each other, as much as to say, "We understand too."

It was only Agatha who took her placid way undisturbed. But the day came when, matters being at last arranged, the children were told all about it, and this is what they heard:

Mary was to spend a year with her real mother at Haworth, and a year with Mrs Vallance at Wensdale, alternately, until she was eighteen years old. On her eighteenth birthday she might choose at which of these two homes she would live altogether.

"If you _could_ choose," Jackie had once said to her in jest, "whose daughter would you be?"

And now, in years to come, the choice would really have to be made--the choice between Haworth and Wensdale, hard work and idleness, poverty and riches. Which would it be?

"Of course," was Jackie's first remark, "you'll choose Wensdale, won't you?"

But so many strange things had happened lately to Mary that she did not just now feel as if anything was "of course."

STORY TWO, CHAPTER 1.

BUZLEY'S COURT.

"It's a terr'ble lonesome part from what I hear tell. Miles from the rail, and the house don't stand as it might be in the village street, but by itself in the fields. Mrs Roy--that's the Reverend Roy's wife-- was very straight with me about it. 'If you think, Mrs Lane,' says she, 'that your daughter'll find the place too dull and far away I'd rather you'd say so at once, and I'll look out for another girl. It's not at all like London,' says she, 'and I make no doubt Biddy will feel strange at first.'"

Mrs Lane wielded a large Britannia metal teapot as she spoke, kept an eye on the sympathetic neighbour sitting opposite at the tea-table, and also contrived to cast a side glance at Biddy, who stood at the fire making toast and listening to the conversation. She had heard her mother say much the same thing a great many times since it had been settled that she was to go to Wavebury and take care of Mrs Roy's baby, and she was now quite used to hearing that it was a "lonesome" place, though she did not know what it meant. At any rate it must be something impossible to get at Number 6 Buzley's Court, Whitechapel, where she had lived all the thirteen years of her life. Perhaps she might find it pleasant to be "lonesome," she thought, and yet her mother always added the word "terr'ble" to it, as if it were a thing generally to be disliked.

Meanwhile the conversation went on:

"And she goes to-morrow, then?" said Mrs Jones. "Now I dessay it's a fairish long journey by rail?"

"We've got all directions wrote out clear, by the Reverend Roy hisself,"

answered Mrs Lane proudly. "Biddy, reach me that letter out of the chany jug on the shelf."

Receiving it, she flattened it carefully out on the table with the palm of her hand before the admiring eyes of Mrs Jones, and, pointing to each word, read out slowly and loudly the directions for Biddy's journey.

"She gets out, yer see, at Canley station. That's as far as the rail goes. There she'll be met and druv over to Wavebury--eight miles, Mrs Roy said."

"Dear!" exclaimed Mrs Jones, as the letter was folded up again, "what a outlandish place!"

"We've worked hard, Biddy and me," continued Mrs Lane with a glance of pride at her daughter and a little sigh, "to get all her things nice and ready. Two new dark laylock prints I've got her."

"With a spot?" inquired Mrs Jones full of interest.

"No, with a sprig--I always think there's an air about a laylock print with a sprig. It looks respectable and like service. I don't hold with them new-patterned bright cottons. Once in the wash-tub, and where are they afterwards? Poor ragged-out things not fit to wear. I remember I had laylock prints when I first went to service as a gal, and there's bits of them very gowns in the patch-work quilt yonder."

"Ah!" said Mrs Jones admiringly. Then looking at Biddy's capable little square figure she added, "You'll miss her at first a goodish bit at home."

"If it wasn't that baby's out of hand now and runnin' about I couldn't let her go, not if it was ever so," replied Mrs Lane emphatically.

"But I shall rub along somehow, and seven pounds a year's a consideration. Yes, she's a handy gal, Biddy is, with children. She had ought t'know summat about 'em, for she's helped to bring six of 'em up. There was Stevie--a deal of trouble we had with him. Always weakly, and cut his teeth in his legs. Never out of arms, that child wasn't, till he was pretty nigh two year old. I never should a' reared him if it hadn't been for Biddy. That I own."

On the subject of Stevie's sufferings Mrs Lane had always a great deal to say, and when she paused, less from lack of matter than want of breath, Mrs Jones took up the tale and added experiences of a like nature. Biddy therefore heard no further reference to herself and her prospects, and pursued her own thoughts undisturbed. And she had a great deal to think of, for to-morrow she was going into the world! She would say good-bye to Buzley's Court and to all the things and people in it she had known and lived with, and turn her face to meet new things and new people. Nothing would be familiar to her in that strange world, not even tea-cups with blue rims like these she was washing up for the last time. Everything new, down to the two lilac prints, made longer than ever before, lying at the bottom of the new black box. It was wonderful to think of, and very confusing to the mind. There would even be a new baby to look after. But when Biddy reached this point she smiled securely, for she had no fears about the baby, though Mrs Roy had looked so doubtfully at her and said that she was small. Small!

What had that to do with it? Biddy felt in herself a large capacity for handling babies. Had she not brought Stevie through teething attended with alarming complications? She was not likely to think much of Mrs Roy's baby after that.

And indeed Biddy was one of those people who seem formed by nature in body and mind on purpose to be nurses. The babies were comfortable in her strong capable arms, and their little woes and troubles were quieted and soothed by her patient placid temper. Then, too, she had, as her mother had said, a great deal of experience, for though she was only thirteen years old now, she had always, ever since she could remember anything, had a baby on her mind. A baby had always been the chief circ.u.mstance in her life from the time when she was too small to do anything but keep watch by its cradle, to that when she learnt her lessons for school with a baby in her arms. In her play-hours, when the children of Buzley's Court gathered to enjoy themselves after their own manner in the summer evenings, Biddy looked on from the door-step--with the baby. By the time baby number one was beginning to stagger about, and seize upon knives and scissors and other dangerous playthings, baby number two--pink and incapable--was ready for Biddy's closest attention.

Life, therefore, without a baby on hand would have seemed to her unnatural and even impossible; and the baby at Wavebury, instead of something to be dreaded, was the only idea her mind rested on with the confidence of long familiarity.

"For babies," she thought, "are pretty much alike. There's fat ones and there's thin ones. The fat ones don't cry so much, and the thin ones do, and that's about the only way they differ."

That night was a very short one to Biddy, and it seemed to her that she was still asleep and dreaming as she and her mother hurried along the cold grey streets in the early morning. Even when they reached the station, much too soon for the train, she could hardly take in the sense of all her mother was repeating to her so earnestly, though she heard the words.

Not to lean against the door, not to lose her ticket, not to forget her box, or the name of the station she was going to. Finally, to be a good gal and mind her work, and remember to say her prayers, and to give Mrs Lane's dooty to her mistress. All of which she promised, and presently found herself seated in a third-cla.s.s carriage clasping in one hand her cotton umbrella, and in the other a small shiny black bag which Mrs Lane called a "ridicule." Then, when she saw her mother standing alone on the platform, she began to wake up and to feel that it was no dream or anything like one. She was really setting forth by herself for a "lonesome" place where there would be no mother. Mother had scolded sometimes, and said sharp things on washing days, but she was fond of Biddy, and proud of her too, and Biddy knew it; the tears rose to her eyes as the train moved away, and as long as she could she waved the "ridicule" in answer to mother's energetic farewells with her umbrella.

But soon, the train quickening its pace, the familiar figure was lost to sight--checked shawl, best black bonnet, gingham umbrella, all vanished, and Biddy was alone, whirling along rapidly towards strange places and people.

Then, for one minute, she felt she must "give way," but not having been used to such a luxury in Buzley's Court, where there was never a moment to spare, she thought better of it, winked back the tears, and sat very upright.

Soon there were plenty of surprising things to be seen out of the window, and first the exceeding greenness of the landscape struck her with astonishment, although it was November and the trees were bare.

Then, as she got further into the country, she wondered to see so few houses. "Where does the folks bide?" she said to herself. It seemed an empty sort of place, with nothing going on, and Mrs Roy had been quite right when she had said, "The country's not at all like London."

Biddy's round brown eyes were still staring out of the window with a fixed expression of surprise when the short winter day began to close in, and a misty gloom spread over the fields and hills as they seemed to chase each other hurriedly past. But though she still tried to look out, and sat stiffly upright in her corner, her head nodded forward now and then, and the whirr and rattle of the train sounded with a sort of sing-song in her weary ears. She struggled to keep awake, but her eyelids seemed pressed down by some determined hand, and at last she gave it up and let them remain closed. After that she was conscious of nothing till she heard a shout of "Canley station!" quite near her, and she jumped up with a start and saw a porter holding the carriage door open; the light of his lantern shone on the wet pavement, but everywhere else it was quite dark and raining fast.

"Oh, please," said Biddy, "I'm to get out; and is there anyone here from Wavebury?"

She had repeated this sentence so often to herself that it came out now without the least effort.