"No, Mother. For Mrs. Wood."
"You might have called at the farm as you passed," said she.
"I did!" said I.
"Couldn't you see Mrs. Wood, love?"
"Yes, I saw her, but she'd got the tramp with her."
"What tramp?" asked my mother in a horror-struck voice, which seemed
quite natural to me, for I had been brought up to rank tramps in the
same "dangerous class" with mad dogs, stray bulls, drunken men, and
other things which it is undesirable to meet.
"The great lanky one," I explained, quoting from Mary Anne.
"What was he doing with Mrs. Wood?" asked my mother anxiously.
I had not yet recovered from my own bewilderment, and was reckless of
the shock inflicted by my reply.
"_Pooring_ her head, and kissing it."
CHAPTER V.
"To each his sufferings; all are men
Condemned alike to groan.
The tender for another's pain--"
GRAY.
Not even the miser's funeral had produced in the neighbourhood anything
like the excitement which followed that Sunday evening. At first my
mother--her mind filled by the simplest form of the problem, namely,
that Mrs.
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