'Not there?'
'No. Old Abednego Tripp comes over here every market day, and he's the only person I wanted to see.'
'I thought you came here because you wanted to see the place?'
'Yes; but I was not up to the walk when I came here; and while you were ill I never durst go out of reach of the telegraph, and latterly I waited for you. After all, I have not much mind to it. I don't see the good of setting oneself a coveting one's neighbour's house.'
'It wouldn't be my house, any way,' said Lance quaintly. 'How far is it?'
'Rather more than three miles. We'll get a boat some day and do it.'
'That will be jolly!' and after shovelling a little longer, Lance added, 'How came we to be turned out?'
'That's just what I can't tell. I was only seven, you know, and my father never would talk of it. Sibby used to revile the mane nagur, Misther Fulbert, till it was current in the nursery that he was a black man who expelled us vi et armis. One day, my father found four or five of us in a row slashing at an old black doll, by way of killing Misther Fulbert, and prohibited such executions. I think, too, that he quashed an attempt to call our own Fulbert by his other name.'
'I wonder what the nagur did?'
'By the light of maturer nature, I imagine that he may have succeeded as heir-at-law, and that his maneness may have consisted in not giving the living to my father; but I cannot tell. It always seemed my father's great desire to put it out of our minds. I remember before we left the place his catching me in a furious rage with some one who told me my pony was to be sold. He carried me off, and told me it was all true; and we were going away, and he trusted to me to be brave and make it as little hard to Mamma and the little girls as could be. He said the place had belonged to old Uncle Underwood, and that we had no right to stay there after his death. That was all the explanation he gave me, first or last; and I don't think we thought much about it after the neck of the change was broken.'