“Nor deem the irrevocable Past

    As wholly wasted, wholly vain.”

    Longfellow.

“Be they Gobblealls not coming home?” asked Nanny Barton, as she stood at her gate, while some of her neighbours came slowly out of church, about two years later.

“My man, he did ask Shepherd Tomkins,” said Betsy Seddon, “and all the answer he got was, ‘You don’t desarve it, not you.’ As if my man had gone out with that there rabble rout!”

“And I’m sure mine only went up to see what they were after, and helped to put out the fire beside.”

“Ay,” said Cox, behind her, “but not till the soldiers were come.”

“Time they did come!” said Seddon. “Rain comes through the roof, and that there Lawyer Brent won’t have nothing done to it till the captain comes home.”

“Yes,” added Morris, “and when I spoke to him about my windows, as got blown in, he said ‘cottages were no end of expense, and we hadn’t treated them so as they would wish to come back nohow.’”

“Think of their bearing malice!” cried Nanny Barton.

“I don’t believe as how they does,” responded the other Nanny. “They have sent the coals and the blankets all the same.”

“Bear malice!” said Mrs Truman, who had just walked up. “No, no. Why, Parson Harford have said over and over again, when he gave a shilling or so or a meat order, to help a poor lady that was ill, that ’twas by madam’s wish.”

“And Governess Thorpe, she has the bag of baby-linen and half a pound of tea for any call,” said Mrs Spurrell.

“But one looks for the friendly word and the time of day,” sighed Betsy Seddon.

“The poor children, they don’t half like their school without the ladies to look in,” said Mrs Truman. “It is quite a job to get them there without Miss Sophy to tell them stories.”

“I can’t get mine to go at all on Sundays,” said Nanny Morris.

“And,” added Betsy Se............