until she had learned sufficient cooking to enable her to get another
place. But Mrs. Latch had the power to thwart her in this. Before
beginning on her jellies and gravies Mrs. Latch was sure to find some
saucepans that had not been sufficiently cleaned with white sand, and, if
her search proved abortive, she would send Esther upstairs to scrub out
her bedroom.

"I cannot think why she is so down upon me," Esther often said to
Margaret.

"She isn't more down upon you than she was on the others. You needn't
expect to learn any cooking from her; her plan has always been to take
care that she shall not be supplanted by any of her kitchen-maids. But I
don't see why she should be always sending you upstairs to clean out her
bedroom. If Grover wasn't so stand-offish, we might tell her about it, and
she could tell the Saint--that's what we call the missis; the Saint would
soon put a stop to all that nonsense. I will say that for the Saint, she
do like everyone to have fair play."

Mrs. Barfield, or the Saint, as she was called, belonged, like Esther, to
the sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. She was the daughter of one of
the farmers on the estate--a very old man called Elliot. He had spent his
life on his barren down farm, becoming intimate with no one, driving hard
bargains with all, especially the squire and the poor flint-pickers. He
could be seen still on the hill-sides, his long black coat buttoned
strictly about him, his soft felt hat crushed over the thin, grey face.
Pretty Fanny Elliot had won the squire's heart as he rode across the down.
Do you not see the shy figure of the Puritan maiden tripping through the
gorse, hastening the hoofs of the squire's cob? And, furnished with some
pretext of estate business, he often rode to the farm that lay under the