He turned, re-entered the house, and was met by Jessie in her bibbed apron, her hands white from kneading the bread.
"Who is that man, Father?" she asked.
"The king's messenger," he answered.
"What can he want? Why has he come here?"
"That I cannot tell you," answered her father. "We shall probably know in due time."
"If I had not my first batch ready for the oven, I would run up to the farm at once," she said regretfully.
"Better wait, my little girl," said the vicar. "If it is good news it will come to us quickly; if it is bad, there is time enough. Go back to your bread-making; I will go back to my sermon."
"Oh, that is all very well!" Jessie muttered to herself, "but I am always afraid of what will happen up there, lest something should take them away again, and then, then what should I do?" And tears gathered in her eyes.
If Jessie had had few joys in life, she had had no sorrows, so that even this little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand in her horizon, frightened her soul. She went back to her bread-making, but her heart was no longer in her work, and the bread suffered; it was long rising, and she felt guilty when on the morrow Mary remarked:
"It's not so light as it might be, Jessie."