anything, and always hoping to get better, he had sent different
gentlemen to take the services, first one and then another, or had
asked the masters at Ragglesford to help him; but it was all very
irregular, and no one had settled down long enough to know the people
or do much good in visiting them. My Lady, as they all called Lady
Jane, was as sorry as any one could be, and she tried what she could
do by paying a very good school-master and mistress, and giving
plenty of rewards; but nothing could be like the constant care of a
real good clergyman, and the people were all the worse for the want.
They had the church to go to, but it was not brought home to them.
The Rector had been obliged at last to go abroad, one of the
Ragglesford gentlemen had performed the service for the ensuing
Sundays, until now there seemed to be a chance that this new
clergyman was coming to stay.

This interested Alfred less than his sister. His curiosity was
chiefly about the strange lad; and when he was moved to his place by
the window he turned his eyes anxiously to make him out in the line
of hay-makers, two fields off, as they shook out the grass to give it
the day's sunshine. He knew them all, the ten women, with their old
straw bonnets poked down over their faces, and deep curtains sewn on
behind to guard their necks; the farm men come in from their other
work to lend a hand, three or four boys, among whom he could see
Harold's white shirt sleeves, and sometimes hear his merry laugh, and
he was working next to the figure in brown faded-looking tattered
array, which Alfred suspected to belong to the strange boy. So did
Ellen. 'Ah!' she said, 'Harold ye scraped acquaintance with that
vagabond-looking boy; I wish I had warned him against it, but I
suppose he would only have done it all the more.'