CHAPTER VIII 60
" India is quite different from Yorkshire," Mary said slowly, as she thought the matter over. " I never thought of that. Did Dickon and your mother like to hear you talk about me?"
" Why, our Dickon ' s eyes nearly started out o ' his head, they got that round," answered Martha. " But mother, she was put out about your seemin ' to be all by yourself like. She said, ' Hasn ' t Mr. Craven got no governess for her, nor no nurse?' and I said, ' No, he hasn ' t, though Mrs. Medlock says he will when he thinks of it, but she says he mayn ' t think of it for two or three years.'"
" I don ' t want a governess," said Mary sharply.
" But mother says you ought to be learnin ' your book by this time an ' you ought to have a woman to look after you, an ' she says: ' Now, Martha, you just think how you ' d feel yourself, in a big place like that, wanderin ' about all alone, an ' no mother. You do your best to cheer her up,' she says, an ' I said I would."
Mary gave her a long, steady look. " You do cheer me up," she said. " I like to hear you talk."
Presently Martha went out of the room and came back with something held in her hands under her apron.
" What does tha ' think," she said, with a cheerful grin. " I ' ve brought thee a present."
" A present!" exclaimed Mistress Mary. How could a cottage full of fourteen hungry people give any one a present!
" A man was drivin ' across the moor peddlin '," Martha explained. " An ' he stopped his cart at our door. He had pots an ' pans an ' odds an ' ends, but mother had no money to buy anythin '. Just as he was goin ' away our ' Lizabeth Ellen called out, ' Mother, he ' s got skippin '-ropes with red an ' blue