"It's sad about Jane Evans, isn't it?"
"What's sad, Dick?" asked Anne, still standing, and resting both hands on the table. "Excuse my not sitting down, I've got a bad turn of rheumatism."
"That's bad," said Dick. "I once had a bit in my back, and it was as much as I wanted."
"But what about Jane?" asked Anne. "I've scarcely seen her or her sister since the old grandmother died. I seldom get so far away. The Ashley road doesn't go near that side, and that's the one that sees me oftenest."
"Well, it seems," replied Dick, finding it, after all, an awkward subject to talk of to a woman, "she's gone to live with that horse-breeder who's taken Burton's farm."
"But he's a married man," said Anne, not comprehending.
"Yes, I know," said Dick, with an embarrassed laugh, but Anne did not hear. She had understood.
"She was a good, respectable girl," she said. "However can she have forgotten herself like that? Where's her sister Annie?"
"They do say she's nearly as bad," replied Dick. "He's rather a taking man—good-looking and hearty, and dresses better than the farmers, and his wife went off with a trainer too."
"Her grandmother's only been dead two years, and she's been allowed to go wrong like that," exclaimed Anne, with condemnation of herself in her voice.