Chapter 42 - Page 2

with me, she went through with the Minders, she went
through with herself, she went through with everythink. O Mrs
Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a woman and a mother and a
mangler in a million million!'

With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from
the church door, and took it back to the grave in the comer, and
laid it down there, and wept alone. 'Not a very poor grave,' said
the Reverend Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes,
'when it has that homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could
be made by most of the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!'

They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate. The
water-wheel of the paper-mill was audible there, and seemed to
have a softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had
arrived but a little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them
the little she could add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr
Rokesmith's letter and had asked for their instructions. This was
merely how she had heard the groan, and what had afterwards
passed, and how she had obtained leave for the remains to be
placed in that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of the mill from
which they had just accompanied them to the churchyard, and how
the last requests had been religiously observed.

'I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,' said Lizzie. 'I
should not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the
power, without our managing partner.'

'Surely not the Jew who received us?' said Mrs Milvey.

('My dear,' observed her husband in parenthesis, 'why not?')

'The gentleman certainly is a Jew,' said Lizzie, 'and the lady, his
wife, is a Jewess, and I was first brought to their notice by a Jew.
But I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.'

'But suppose they try to convert you!' suggested Mrs Milvey,
bristling in her good little way, as a clergyman's wife.

'To do what, ma'am?' asked Lizzie, with a modest smile.

'To make you change your religion,' said Mrs Milvey.

Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. 'They have never asked me
what my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told
them. They asked me to be industrious and faithful, and I
promised to be so. They most willingly and cheerfully do their
duty to all of us who are employed here, and we try to do ours to
them. Indeed they do much more than their duty to us, for they are
wonderfully mindful of us in many ways.

'It is easy to see you're a favourite, my dear,' said little Mrs Milvey,
not quite pleased.

'It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,' returned Lizzie,
'for I have been already raised to a place of confidence here. But
that makes no difference in their