"Time has not changed the queer old man a bit. The other day I sent him a fine hare: two hours after, I was riding with another nobleman through Storby, when, who should turn the corner of Market Street but old Piper, bearing in his hands a great red earthenware dish, covered in with paste. When he saw me, he stopped just before our horses, and, making me a profound bow, tapped the dish with his hand, calling out in a jocular voice:
"'Thank you, my lord, for pussie! she is safe here, under cover, and I am now going to dine like a prince.'
"The bystanders laughed. How could they help it; my friend fairly roared, and I felt rather mortified at the old man making such a public demonstration of his gratitude for such a small gift."
Dorothy enjoyed the anecdote, and laughed too. "I have no doubt we shall get on famously together, for I will set my whole heart to the work."
The Earl shook her heartily by the hand, and rode off in good spirits. The little episode of the music, and the eccentricities of Dorothy's future master, had won him from his melancholy. A week had scarcely elapsed before Mrs. Martin brought Dorothy the joyful intelligence that the piano had arrived; that Mr. Piper was tuning it, and had pronounced it a first rate instrument, and the children were all wild with delight.
This was a new epoch in Dorothy's life. She employed every spare moment in mastering the difficulties of the science, and enchanted old Piper with the attention she gave to his prosaical instructions. "Her face," he said, "might make a fortune, but her voice was sure to do it. He was no great judge of beauty, had never courted a woman in his life, and was too old to think of it now. But he was a judge of music, and he was pretty sure that she could not fail in that."
Mr. Rushmere did not approve of this new encroachment on what he considered his natural right in Dorothy; though for some months he was kept in profound ignorance of the turn her studies had taken, and even when he at last made the discovery, he was not aware that Lord Wilton was the delinquent that had robbed him of her time. Lord Wilton had furnished Dorothy with money to pay for the hire of a girl, to take charge of the coarser domestic drudgery; still Lawrence Rushmere grumbled and was not satisfied. He wondered where and how the girl obtained her funds, and whether she came honestly by them. Mrs. Rushmere, who was in the secret—for Dorothy kept nothing from her—told him "that it was part of the salary paid by the Earl to Dorothy for teaching in the Sunday school." This was the truth; "and that he ought, instead of constantly finding fault with the poor girl, to rejoice in her good fortune. Dorothy was growing more like a lady every day, and was so good and clever that he should consider her a credit to the house."
"I thought a deal more on her," quoth the old man, "when she was dressed in homespun and was not above her business. Those silly people are making a fule o' the girl, turning her head with vanity and conceit. Wife, you can't make a purse out o' a sow's ear, or a real lady out o' one not born a lady. They are spoiling the girl an' quite unfitting her for an honest labourer's wife."
At this moment the object under dispute came tripping into the room, dressed in a simple muslin gown with a neat coarse straw bonnet tied closely under her soft round chin. Mrs. Rushmere glanced up at the lovely smiling girl, so graceful in all her movements, so artless and winning in her unaffected simplicity, and quite realized her husband's idea, that she was not fit for a ploughman's help-mate.
"Well, Doll, lass, what's up at the parsonage?" cried the farmer. "Your face is all of a glow and brimful of summat."