"You do seem to have hit on a rather nice spot, Rachel, though lonesome,"
said Miss Henderson's friend and partner, Janet Leighton, as they stood
on the front steps of Great End Farm, surveying the scene outside, on an
August evening, about a week after she and Rachel had arrived with their
furniture and personal belongings to take possession of the farm.
During that week they had both worked hard--from dawn till dark, both
outside and in. The harvest was in full swing, and as the dusk was
filling, Janet Leighton, who had just returned herself from the fields,
could watch the scene going on in the wheat-field beyond the farm-yard,
where, as the reaping machine steadily pared away the remaining square of
wheat, two or three men and boys with guns lay in wait outside the square
for the rabbits as they bolted from their fast lessening shelter. The
gold and glow of harvest was on the fields and in the air. At last the
sun had come back to a sodden land, after weeks of cold and drenching
showers which, welcomed in June, had by the middle of August made all
England tremble for the final fate of the gorgeous crops then filling the
largest area ever tilled on British soil with their fat promise. Wheat,
oats, and barley stood once more erect, roots were saved, and the young
vicar of Ipscombe was reflecting as he walked towards Great End Farm that
his harvest festival sermon might now after all be rather easier to write
than had seemed probable during the foregoing anxious weeks of chill and
storm.
Rachel Henderson, who had thrown herself--tired out--into a chair in the
sitting-room window, which was wide open, nodded as she caught her
friend's remark and smiled. But she did not want to talk. She was in that
state of physical fatigue when mere rest is a positive delight. The sun,
the warm air, the busy harvest scene, and all the long hours of hard but
pleasant work seemed to be still somehow in her pulses, thrilling through
her blood. It was long since she had known the acute physical pleasure of
such a day; but her sense of it had conjured up involuntarily
recollections of many similar days in a distant scene--great golden
spaces, blinding sun, and huge reaping machines, twice the size of that
at work in the field yonder. The recollections were unwelcome. Thought
was unwelcome. She wanted only food and sleep--deep sleep--renewing
her tired muscles, till the delicious early morning came round again, and
she was once more in the fields directing her team of workers.
"Why, there's the vicar!" said Janet Leighton, perceiving the tall and
willowy figure of Mr. Shenstone, as its owner stopped to speak to one of
the boys with the guns who were watching the game.
Rachel looked round with a look of annoyance.
"Oh, dear, what a bore," she said wearily. "I suppose I must go and tidy
up. Nobody ought to be allowed to pay visits after five o'clock."
"You asked him something about a village woman to help, didn't you?"
"I did, worse luck!" sighed Rachel, gathering up her sunbonnet and
disappearing from the window. Janet heard her go upstairs, and a hasty
opening of cupboards overhead. She herself had come back an hour earlier
from the fields than Rachel in order to get supper ready, and had slipped
a skirt over the khaki tunic and knickerbockers which were her dress--and
her partner's--when at work on the farm. She wondered mischievously what
Rachel would put on. That her character included an average dose of
vanity, the natural vanity of a handsome woman, Rachel's new friend was
well aware. But Janet, Rachel's elder by five years, was only tenderly
amused by it. All Rachel's foibles, as far as she knew them, were
pleasant to her. They were in that early stage of a new friendship when
all is glamour.
Yet Janet did sometimes reflect, "How little I really know about her. She
is a darling--but a mystery!"
They had met at college, taken their farm training together, and fallen
in love with each other. Janet had scarcely a relation in the world.
Rachel possessed, it seemed, a brother in Canada, another in South
Africa, and some cousins whom she scarcely knew, children of the uncle
who had left her three thousand pounds. Each had been attracted by the
loneliness of the other, and on leaving college nothing was more natural
than they should agree to set up together. Rachel, as the capitalist, was
to choose the farm and take command. Janet went to a Cheshire dairy farm
for a time to get some further training in practical work; and she was
now responsible for the dairy at Great End, with the housekeeping and the
poultry thrown in. She was a thin, tall woman with spectacles, and had
just seen her thirty-second birthday. Her eyes were honest and clear, her
mouth humorous. She never grudged other women their beauty or their
success. It always seemed to her she had what she deserved.
Meanwhile the vicar approached, and Miss Leighton descended the steps and
went to meet him at the gate. His aspect showed him apologetic.
"I have come at an unearthly hour, Miss Leighton. But I thought I should
have no chance of finding Miss Henderson free till the evening, and I
came to tell you that I think I have found a woman to do your work."
Janet bade him come in, and assured him that Rachel would soon be
visible. She ushered him into the sitting-room, which he entered on a
note of wonderment.
"How nice you have made it all," he said, looking round him. "When I
think what a deserted hole this has been for years. You know, the village
people firmly believe it is haunted? Old Wellin never could get anybody
to sleep here. But tramps often used it, I'm certain. They got in through
the windows. Hastings told me he had several times found a smouldering
fire in the kitchen."
"What sort is the ghost?" Janet inquired, as she pointed him to a chair,
devoutly hoping that Rachel would hurry herself.
"Well, there's a story--but I wonder whether I ought to tell you--"
"I assure you as to ghosts--I have no nerves!" said Janet with a
confident laugh, "and I don't think Rachel has either. We are more
frightened of rats. This farm-yard contains the biggest I've ever seen.
I dream of them at night."
"It's not exactly the ghost--" said the vicar, hesitating.
"But the story that produced the ghost? What--a murder?"
"Half a century ago," said the vicar reassuringly; "you won't mind that?"
"Not the least. A century ago would be romantic. If it was just the other
day, we should feel we ought to have got the farm cheaper. But half a
century doesn't matter. It's a mid-Victorian, just a plain, old-fashioned
murder. Who did it?"
The vicar opened his eyes a little. Miss Leighton was, he saw, a lady,
and perhaps clever. Her spectacles looked like it. No doubt she had been
at Oxford or Cambridge before going to Swanley? These educated women in
new professions were becoming a very pressing and common fact! As to the
murder, he explained that it had been just an ordinary poaching affair.
An old gamekeeper on the Shepherd estate had been attacked by a gang of
poachers in the winter of 1866. He had been shot in one of the woods, and
though mortally wounded had been able to drag himself to the outskirts of
the farm where his strength had failed him. He was found dead under the
cart-shed which backed on the stables, and the traces of blood on the
hill marked the stages of his struggle for life. Two men were suspected,
one of them a labourer on the Great End Farm; but there was no evidence.
The suspected labourer had gone to Canada the year after the murder, and
no one knew what had happened to him.
But having told the tale the vicar was again seized with compunction.
"I oughtn't to have told you--I really oughtn't; just on your settling
in--I hope you won't tell Miss Henderson?"
Janet's amused reply was interrupted by Rachel's entrance. The vicar
arose with eagerness to receive her. He was evidently attracted by his
new parishioners and anxious to make a good impression on them. Miss
Henderson's reception of the vicar, however, was far more guarded. The
easy friendliness of manner which had attracted the bailiff Hastings was,
at first at any rate, entirely absent. Her attitude was almost that of a
woman defending herself against possible intrusion, and Janet Leighton,
looking on, and occasionally sharing in the conversation, was surprised
by it, as indeed she was by so many things concerning Rachel now that
their acquaintance was deepening; surprised also, as though it were a new
thing, by her friend's good looks as she sat languidly chatting with the
vicar. Rachel had merely put on a blue overall above her land-worker's
dress. But her beautiful head, with its wealth of brown hair, and her
face, with its sensuous fulness of cheek and lip, its rounded lines, and
lovely colour--like a slightly overblown rose--were greatly set off by
the simple folds of blue linen; and her feet and legs, shapely but not
small, in their khaki stockings and shoes, completed the general effect
of lissom youth. The flush and heat of hard bodily work had passed away.
She had had time to plunge her face into cold water and smooth her hair.
But the atmosphere of the harvest field, its ripeness and glow, seemed to
be still about her. A classically minded man might have thought of some
nymph in the train of Demeter, might have fancied a horn of plenty, or a
bow, slung from the sunburnt neck.
But the vicar had forgotten his classics. _En revanche_, however, he was
doing his best to show himself sympathetic and up-to-date with regard to
women and their new spheres of work--especially on the land. He had
noticed three girls, he said, working in the harvest field. Two of them
he recognized as from the village; the third he supposed was a stranger?
"She comes from Ralstone," said Rachel.
"Ah, that's the village where the new timber camp is. You really must see
that camp, Miss Henderson."
"I hate to think of the woods coming down," she said, frowning a little.
"We all do. But that's the war. It can't be helped, alack! But it's
wonderful to see the women at work, measuring and checking, doing the
brain work, in fact, while the men do the felling and loading. It makes
one envious."
The vicar sighed. A flush appeared on his young but slightly cadaverous
face.
"Of the men--or the women?"
"Oh, their work, I mean. They're doing something for the war. I've done
my best. But the Bishop won't hear of it."
And he rather emphatically explained how he had applied in vain for an
army chaplaincy. Health and the shortage of clergy had been against him.
"I suppose there must be some left at home," he said with a shrug, "and
the doctors seem to have a down on me."
Janet was quite sorry for the young man--he was so eagerly apologetic, so
anxious to propitiate what he imagined ought to be their feelings about
him. And Rachel all the time sat so silent and unresponsive.
Miss Leighton drew the conversation back to the timber camp; she would
like to go and see it, she said. Every one knew the Canadians were
wonderful lumbermen.
The Vicar's eyes had travelled back to Rachel.
"Were you ever in Canada, Miss Henderson?" The question was evidently
thrown out nervously at a venture, just to evoke a word or a smile from
the new mistress of the farm.
Rachel Henderson frowned slightly before replying.
"Yes, I have been in Canada."
"You have? Oh, then, you know all about it."
"I know nothing about Canadian lumbering."
"You were on the prairies?"
"I lived some time on a prairie farm."
"Everything here must seem very small to you," said the vicar
sympathetically. But this amiable tone fell flat. Miss Henderson still
sat silent. The vicar began to feel matters awkward and took his hat from
the floor.
"I trust you will call upon me for any help I can possibly be to you," he
said, turning to Janet Leighton. "I should be delighted to help in the
harvest if you want it. I have a pair of hands anyway, as you see!" He
held them out.
He expatiated a little more on his disappointment as to the front. Janet
threw in a few civil words. Rachel Henderson had moved to the window, and
was apparently looking at the farm-girls carrying straw across the yard.
"Good-night, Miss Henderson," said the young man at last, conscious of
rebuff, but irrepressibly effusive and friendly all the time. "I hope you
will let your Ralstone girl come sometimes to the clubroom my sister and
I have in the village? We feel young people ought to be amused,
especially when they work hard."
"Thank you, but it's so far away. We don't like them to be out late."
"Certainly not. But in the long evenings--don't you know?" The vicar
smiled persuasively. "However, there it is--whenever she comes she will
be welcome. And then, as to your seat in church. There is a pew that has
always belonged to the farm. It is about half-way up."
"We don't go to church," said Rachel, facing him. "At least, I don't."
She looked at her companion.
"And I can't be counted on," said Janet, smiling.
The vicar flushed a little.
"Then you're not Church of England?"
"I am," said Rachel indifferently; "at least I'm not anything else. Miss
Leighton is a Unitarian." Then her eyes lit up with a touch of fun, and
for the first time she smiled. "I'm afraid you'll think us dreadful
heathens, Mr. Shenstone!"
What the vicar did think was that he had never seen a smile transform a
face so agreeably. And having begun to smile, Rachel perversely continued
it. She walked to the gate with her visitor, talking with irrelevant
animation, inviting him to come the following day to help in the
"carrying," asking questions about the village and its people, and
graciously consenting to fix a day when she and her friend would go to
tea with Miss Shenstone at the vicarage. The young man fairly beamed
under the unexpected change, and lingered at the gate as though unable to
tear himself away; till with a little peremptory nod, though still
smiling, Rachel dismissed him.
Janet Leighton meanwhile watched it all. She had seen Rachel treat a new
male acquaintance before as she had just treated the vicar. To begin
with, the manners of an icicle; then a sudden thaw, just in time to save
the situation. She had come with amusement to the conclusion that,
however really indifferent or capricious, her new friend could not in the
long run resign herself to be disliked, even by a woman, and much more in
the case of a man. Was it vanity, or sex, or both? Temperament perhaps;
the modern word which covers so much. Janet remembered a little niece of
her own who in her mother's absence entertained a gentleman visitor with
great success. When asked for his name, she shook her pretty head. "Just
a man, mummy," she said, bridling. Janet Leighton suspected that similar
tales might have been told of Miss Henderson in her babyhood.
And yet impressions recurred to her of another kind--of a sensitive,
almost fierce delicacy--a shrinking from the ugly or merely physical
facts of life, as of one who had suffered some torment in connection with
them.
Janet's eyes followed the curly brown head as its possessor came slowly
back from the gate. She was thinking of a moment when, one evening, while
they were both still at college, they had realized their liking for each
other, and had agreed to set up in partnership. Then Rachel, springing to
her feet, with her hands behind her, and head thrown back, had said
suddenly: "I warn you, I have a story. I don't want to tell you, to tell
anybody. I shan't tell you. It's done with. I give you my word that I'm
not a bad woman. But if you don't want to be my partner on these terms,
say so!"
And Janet had felt no difficulty whatever in becoming Rachel Henderson's
partner on these terms. Nor had she ever yet regretted it.
The light farm cart which had been sent to the station for stores drove
up to the yard gate as Rachel left it. She turned back to receive some
parcels handed out by the "exempted" man who drove it, together with some
letters which had been found lying at the village post office. Two of the
letters were for Janet. She sent them up to the house, and went herself
towards the harvest field.
There they stood--the rows of golden "shocks" or stooks. The "shockers"
had just finished their day's work. She could hear the footsteps of the
last batch, a cheerful chatter, while talk and laughter came softened
through the evening air. The man who had been driving the reaping machine
was doing some rough repairs to it in a far corner of the field, with a
view to the morrow, and she caught sight of her new bailiff, Hastings,
who had waited to see everybody off, disappearing towards his own
cottage, which stood on a lonely spur of the down. The light was fast
going, but the deep glow of the western sky answered the paler gold of
the new-made stubble and the ranged stooks, while between rose the dark
and splendid masses of the woods.
Rachel stood looking at the scene, possessed by a pleasure which in her
was always an ardour. She felt nothing by halves. The pulse of life beat
in her still with an energy, a passion, that astonished herself. She was
full of eagerness for her new work and for success in it, full of
desires, too, for vague, half-seen things, things she had missed so
Far--her own fault. But somewhere in the long, hidden years, they must,
they should be waiting for her.
The harvest was magnificent. She had paid the Wellins a high price for
the standing crops, but there was going to be a profit on her bargain.
Her mind was full of schemes, if only she could get the labour to carry
them out. Farming was now on the up-grade. She had come into it at the
very best moment, and England would never let farming go down again,
after the war, for her own safety's sake.
_The War_! She felt towards it as to some distant force, which, so far as
she personally was concerned, was a force for good. Owing to the war,
farming was booming all over England, and she was in the boom, taking
advantage of it. Yet she was ashamed to think of the war only in that
way. She tried to tame the strange ferment in her blood, and could only
do it by reminding herself of Hastings's wounded son, whose letter he had
showed her. And then--in imagination--she began to see thousands of
others like him, in hospital beds, or lying dead in trampled fields. Her
mood softened, the tears came into her eyes.
Suddenly--a slight whimper--a child's whimper--close beside her. She
paused in amazement, looking round her, till the whimper was renewed; and
there, almost at her feet, cradled in the fragrant hollow of a wheat
stook, she saw a tiny child--a baby about a year old, a fair, plump
thing, just waking from sleep.
At sight of the face bending over her, the child set up a louder cry,
which was not angry, however, only forlorn. The tears welled fast into
her blue eyes. She looked piteously at Rachel.
"Mummy, mummy!"
"You poor little thing!" said Rachel. "Whose are you?"
One of the village women who had been helping in the "shocking," she
supposed, had brought the child. She had noticed a little girl playing
about the reapers in the afternoon--no doubt an elder sister brought to
look after the baby. Between the mother and the sister there must have
been some confusion, and one or other would come running back directly.
But meanwhile she took up the child, who at first resisted passionately,
fighting with all its chubby strength against the strange arms. But
Rachel seemed to have a way with her--a spell, which worked. She bent
over the little thing, soothing and cooing to her, and then finding a few
crumbs of cake in the pocket of her overall, the remains of her own lunch
in the field, she daintily fed the rosy mouth, till the sobs ceased and
the child stared upwards in a sleep wonder, her blue eyes held by the
brown ones above her.
"Mummy!" she repeated, still whimpering slightly.
"Mummy's coming," said Rachel tenderly. "What a duck it is!"
And bending, she kissed the soft, downy cheek greedily, with the same
ardour she had just been throwing into her own dreams of success.
She carried the child, now quiet and comforted, towards the house. The
warm weight upon her arms was delicious to her. Only as she neared the
gate in the now moonlit dusk, her lips quivered suddenly, and two tears
rolled down her cheeks.
"I haven't carried a child," she thought, "since--"
Suddenly there was a shout from the farther gate of the harvest field,
and a girl came running at top speed. It was the little one's elder
sister, and with a proper scolding, Rachel gave up her prize.
The two land-girls had finished giving food and water to the cattle and a
special mush to new-born calves. Everything was now in order for the
night, and Janet, standing on the steps of the farm-house, rang a bell,
which meant that supper would be ready in a few minutes. The two partners
and their employees were soon gathered round the table in the kitchen,
which was also the dining-room. It was a cold meal of bacon, with
lettuce, bread and jam, some tea made on a "Tommy's cooker," and potatoes
which Janet, who was for the present housekeeper and cook, produced hot
and steaming from the hay-box to which she had consigned them after the
midday dinner. A small oil-lamp had been lit, and through the open
windows afterglow and moonrise streamed in to mingle with its light.
There was a pot of flowers on the table--purple scabious, and tall
cow-parsley, gathered from the orchard, where no one had yet had time to
cut the ragged hay beneath the trees.
The scene was typical of a new England. Women governing--and women
serving--they were all alike making their way through new paths to new
ends. It was no household in the ordinary sense. The man was wanting. The
two elder women were bound to the two younger by a purely business tie,
which might or might not develop into something more personal. The two
land-lasses had come to supper in their tunics and breeches, while Rachel
Henderson and Janet had now both put on the coloured overalls which
disguised the masculine garb beneath, and gave them something of the
usual feminine air. Rachel's overall, indeed, was both pretty and
artistic, embroidered a little here and there, and showing a sunburnt
throat beneath the rounded chin.
The talk turned on the day's work, the weather prospects, the vagaries of
the cows at milking time, and those horrid little pests the "harvesters,"
which haunt the chalk soils. The two "hands" were clear by now that they
liked Miss Leighton the best of the two ladies, they hardly knew why.
Betty Rolfe, the younger of them, who came from Ralstone, was a taking
creature, with deep black, or rather violet, eyes, small features framed
in curly hair, and the bloom of ripe fruit. She was naturally full of
laughter and talk, and only spoilt by her discoloured and uneven teeth,
which showed the usual English neglect of such things in childhood.
Her companion, Jenny Harberton, was a much more ordinary type, with broad
cheeks, sandy hair, and a perpetual friendly grin, which generally served
her instead of speech, at least in her employer's presence. She was a
capital milker, and a good honest child. Her people lived in the village,
and her forebears had always lived there. They were absolutely indigenous
and autochthonous--a far older Brookshire family than any of the dwellers
in the big houses about.
Then in the midst of a loving report by Betty on the virtues and docility
of a beautiful Jersey cow who was the pride of Miss Henderson's new herd,
Janet Leighton remembered one of her letters of the evening and drew it
out of her pocket.
"Who do you think is going to be--is already--the commandant of the
timber girls in the new camp?"
Rachel couldn't guess.
"You remember Mrs. Fergusson--at College?"
Rachel raised her eyebrows.
"The Irish lady? Perfectly."
"Well, it's she. She writes to me to say she is quite settled, with
thirty girls, that the work is fascinating, and they all love it, and you
and I _must_ go over to see her."
Rachel looked irresponsive.
"It's a long way."
"Oh, Miss," said Jenny Harberton timidly, "it's not so very far. An' it's
lovely when you get there. Father was there last week, drivin' some
officers. He says it _is_ interestin'!"
Jenny's father, a plumber in the village, owned a humble open car which
was in perpetual request.
"There are a hundred Canadians apparently," said Janet Leighton, looking
at her letter, "and German prisoners, quite a good few, and these thirty
girls. Mrs. Fergusson begs us to come. Sunday's no good because we
couldn't see the work, but--after the harvest? We could get there with
the pony quite well."
Rachel said nothing.
Janet Leighton dropped the subject for the moment, but after supper, with
her writing-desk on her knee, she returned to it.
"Can't you go without me?" said Rachel, who was standing with her back to
the room, looking out of the window.
"Well, I could," said Janet, feeling rather puzzled, "but I thought you
were curious to see these new kinds of work for women?"
"So I am. It isn't the women."
"The German prisoners, then?" laughed Janet.
"Heavens, no!"
"The Canadians?" asked Janet--in wonder--after a moment. Rachel turned
abruptly towards her.
"Well, I didn't have exactly a good time in Canada," she said, as though
the admission was dragged out of her; adding immediately, "but of course
I'll go--sometime--after the harvest."
On which she left the room, and presently Janet saw her wandering among
the stooks in the gloaming, her hands behind her back. She seemed in her
ripe and comely youth to be somehow the very spirit of the harvest.
A little later, just before ten o'clock, while the sunset glow was still
brooding on the harvest fields, the two farm-girls, after a last visit to
the cows, slipped into the little sitting-room. Janet, who was mending
her Sunday dress, greeted them with a smile and a kind word. Then she
moved to the table and took up a New Testament that was lying there. She
was an ardent and mystically-minded Unitarian, and her mind was much set
towards religion.
"Shall we have prayers at night?" she had said quite simply to the f
arm-girls on their arrival. "Don't if you don't want to." And they had
shyly said "yes"--not particularly attracted by the proposal, but willing
to please Miss Leighton, who was always nice to them.
So Janet read some verses from the sixth chapter of St. John: "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on Me hath everlasting
life ... I am the Bread of Life ... I am the living Bread which came down
from Heaven ... The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they
are life."
Closing the book, while her quiet eyes shone in the gleaming dusk, she
said a few simple things about the Words of Christ, and how the human
soul may feed on them--the Word of Love--the Word of Purity--the Word of
Service. While she was still speaking, the door opened and Rachel came
in. It had been agreed between her and Janet that although she had no
objection to the prayers, she was not to be asked to take part in them.
So that Janet's pulses fluttered a little when she appeared. But there
was no outward sign of it. The speaker finished what she had to say,
while the eyes of her three hearers were sometimes on her face and
sometimes on the wide cornfield beyond the open window, where the harvest
moon, as yet only a brilliant sickle, was rising. The Earth Bread
without--the "Bread of Life" within; even in Jenny's primitive mind,
there was a mingling of the two ideas, which brought a quiet joy. She sat
with parted lips, feeling that she liked Miss Leighton very much, and
would try to please her with the cows.
Betty, meanwhile, beside her, passed into a waking dream. She was
thinking of a soldier in the village: the blacksmith's son, a tall,
handsome fellow, who had just arrived on leave for ten days. She had
spent Sunday evening wandering in the lanes with him. She felt
passionately that she must see him again--soon.
The little reading passed into the Lord's Prayer. Then it was over and
the two girls disappeared to bed. Janet felt a little awkward when she
was left alone with Rachel, but she went back to her sewing and began to
talk of the day's news of the war. Rachel answered at random, and very
soon said good-night.
But long after everybody else in the solitary farmhouse was asleep,
Rachel Henderson was sitting up in bed, broad awake, her hands round her
knees. The window beside her was open. She saw the side of the hill and
the bare down in which it ended, with the moonlight bright upon it, and
the dark woods crowning it. There were owls calling from the hill, and
every now and then a light wind rustled through the branches of an oak
that stood in the farm-yard.
She was thinking of what Janet had said about the "Words" of Christ--the
Word of Purity--and the Word of Love. How often she had heard her
father read and expound that chapter! very differently as far as
phraseology--perhaps even as far as meaning--went, yet with all his
heart, like Janet. He was an Anglican clergyman who had done missionary
service in the Canadian West. He had been dead now three years, and her
mother five. She had bitterly missed them both when she was in her worst
need; yet now she was thankful they had died--before--
What would her father think of her now? Would he grant that she was free,
or would he still hold to those rigid, those cruel views of his? Oh, he
must grant it! She _was_ free! Her breast shook with the fervour of her
protest. She had been through passion and wrong, through things that
seared and defiled. She knew well that she had been no mere innocent
sufferer. Yet now she had her life before her again; and both heart and
senses were hungry for the happiness she had so abominably missed. And
her starved conscience--that, too, was eagerly awake. She had her
self-respect to recover--the past to forget.
_Work_! that was the receipt--hard work! And this dear woman, Janet
Leighton, to help her; Janet, with her pure, modest life and her high
aims. So, at last, clinging to the thought of her new friend like a
wearied child, Rachel Henderson fell asleep.