"Well, then, say nothing about it," said her father.
They sat down to their evening meal. Mary, the faithful servant, who had been with them ever since Jessie's birth, who had nursed the mistress, who had seen the other little children laid beside her to rest, was excited to-night, and could not keep silence as she waited on the vicar and his daughter.
"The people in the village are all agog to know who the newcomers are," she said. "Only a few are left who remember the coming and the flitting from the Holt, fifteen years ago. They remember the christening of the babe and the burying of the mother. Old Thomas, the sexton, says he's sure the child's name was Agnes. Can that girl be the child?"
"It is even so, Mary," said the vicar, "but you need not talk about it. Let them say what they will. In a few days they will quiet down, and we shall hear no more gossip."
"I am not given to gossiping," said Mary in an injured tone, "but it's not that easy to shut other people's mouths."
"Don't try," said her master; "let things be."
The vicar was right. Things let alone settle down by themselves, and before a month was over Agnes and Patience had stepped into their places; it was as if they had always been at St. Mary's.
To the child it was a homecoming, a joy to her who had never had a home. From the first it was settled that she should go every day to the vicar to be taught with Jessie.
"She is very ignorant," Patience said, "she can barely read or write in English; but she is quick, and I shall be much mistaken if she does not learn as fast as you can teach her."
So the girlish figure running down the hillside, crossing the bridge, picking her way over the tombstones of the little churchyard on her way to the vicarage garden, was soon a familiar sight. The men and women going to their work in the fields wished her good morrow, and she answered them with a glad voice and a brilliant smile, so that at last many went out of their way to win that smile and that gracious greeting.