was coming on her household—Crop had died years before, and Betty afterwards always went to town in the market-cart; but what was the loss of Crop to the loss of Betty?
"Betty was younger than Mrs. Howard, but she was called away before her; she had lived forty years with Mrs. Howard in this very house, and the loss could not be made up to her in this world.
"Mrs. Howard had a great-nephew, a surgeon, of the name of Johnson, who lived in a fair village, called Pangbourne, in Berkshire; and when he heard of the death of Betty, and how low his aunt was, he came to her, and persuaded her to leave the country, and go and reside near to him. She was at first unwilling to go, but was at last persuaded; she took nothing with her but her favourite chair, her old round table, her books, and her cabinet. Her nephew got her some very pleasant rooms in a house called the Wood House, about half a mile from the village, towards the hills which are near the place. That side of Pangbourne was in those days almost a continued wood coppice, with occasional tall trees towards the hills, and there was a narrow road and raised path through the wood to the town.
"Mrs. Howard's parlour had an old-fashioned bow-window in it, looking to the road, though somewhat raised above it; and
Mrs. Howard, as old people do, loved in fine weather to sit in the bow, and see the few people who passed.
"Every day her kind nephew came to see her, and now and then she returned his visit; but she was getting very infirm, though she had lost neither sight nor hearing, could read and work as in her younger days, and having got over the first shock of losing Betty, and the fatigue of the change, her faith in God's love was making her as happy
as she had been before; she liked the people also who kept the house, and made herself very pleasant to them. Though she went to Pangbourne in the autumn, she did not, until the month of April, find the pleasure of sitting in the bow-window.
"It was then that she first noticed two little girls passing and returning every day at certain hours to and from the village.
"They were so near of a size that she thought they must be twins. They were very fair, and very pretty, and very neat. They wore light green stuff frocks, with lawn aprons and tippets, and little tight neat silk bonnets of the colour of their frocks. They both always carried a sort of satchel, as if they were going and coming from school; and there was often with them, when they went to the village, either a man or woman servant, such as might be supposed to belong to a farmhouse. They often, however,
passed by the window in the evening without a servant, and sometimes were met by a servant near the house. These little ones could not, from their appearance, have been more than seven years of age.