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In his arms at night, Matthew would tell her she was beautiful; he would become an ardent lover and cover her body with his lips, but in the daytime he was the miller and she his wife, and he wished her appearance and manner to be such that she would claim respect from all.

But as the years went on and the respect began to flow in to him and his wife in the form of invitations from his business associates, he politely refused them. Nor, she knew, did he like her around the yard when men were bringing their grain in, whether they be farmer, justice, or squire.

Twice a year he took her to the theatre in Newcastle; he took them all to the theatre in Newcastle; and these were great events in their lives. But he never took her to church on Sunday, not even to please Parson Hedley. "

His gifts to her were many, mostly in the form of books; but in the second year of their marriage he bought her a spinet and with delight she learned to play. He only bought her two pieces of jewelry: a plain brooch and a gold chain on which hung a pendant; neither of them was an exciting piece.

They had one serious quarrel in the first twelve years of their marriage; during the following two years they had many. The first was when they had been married but ten months. Matthew had come into the bedroom unexpectedly one afternoon and found her sitting reading the parchments.

He had thought she had returned the papers to His Lordship on their wedding morning when the valet had called, but when he found that she had kept them hidden from him and was now perusing them in secret his anger flared out at her. So this was why she had paid so much attention to her reading lessons, never failing each evening to get out the books, no matter how tired he was.

When he had made to snatch the deeds from her she had sprung away from him and put them behind her back, and the spirit that had brought her and them all through the years in the dwelling place came rising up, and she cried at him, "Don't touch them, Matthew. I'm tellin' you, don't touch them. I didn't want to keep them but His Lordship would have none of them, he said they belonged to me. I didn't want to upset you, that's why I never let on. I don't intend to use them, but I intend to keep them. They're mine. It isn't the value of them but it's all I have for the hairn." And at this he had cried at her,

"That's all you think about, the baim. That's why you're not with mine. Ten months now of loving and not a sign of one. An' why?

"Cos I haven't all of you. Oh, I know, I know. I know what I know.

Clive!

Clive! Clive! You never ceased from calling his name all the time you were bad. God! An' after all he did. An' you know what he did, don't you? Not only rape, but murder. Aye, murder. "

"You never called it that afore," she cried.

"An' you know it was either her or me."

"Give them over here." He held out his hand and it was trembling, but still she defied him, saying, "No! No, I won't. If they're to be destroyed I'll see to it." And when he advanced on her she yelled at him, "I'm warning you, Matthew; if you take these from me I'll never think of you the same again, nothing will be the same again."

After a space of time during which they had looked at each other in pain, he had flung out of the room and she had collapsed into a chair where she sat staring before her. Then, going to the empty fireplace, she had placed the deeds in it; but when the match was alight she couldn't put it to the papers. She would never claim the house or the money, there was no need to. She had all she wanted, so why couldn't she bum the deeds? She didn't really know except that these two pieces of paper seemed to hold a desire for forgiveness; they spelled reparation for a wrong, not that she held the wrong against him anymore. She couldn't burn them, she couldn't.

Making sure that Matthew was in the mill she went into the attic and, finding a small wooden box, she squeezed the deeds into it; then moving the old trunk that they had brought from the dwelling, she pried up a floor board near a joist and carefully placed the box on the beam.

Then she returned to the bedroom where she folded some paper to the size of the deeds, laid it in the grate, then set light to it.

Later that night she knew he had seen the ashes for he begged her forgiveness, and she gave it him. Five weeks later she told him that she was to have his child, and Victoria was born in November 1838.

It didn't matter to Matthew that his child was a girl and that the house was full of girls; he adored her from the moment she wailed her first cry in his arms and for the following eleven years he claimed her as his own. He petted and spoiled her and indulged her every whim; no dark colors for Victoria, but soft muslins, silks, and velvets and all of rainbow hue.

Watching from the side, Cissie became fearful, more so with the years, wondering what would happen when her daughter fell in love, what would happen when young men came courting her, as they would do for she was beautiful, even breathtaking. Would Matthew let her go to another man?

She was never jealous of her daughter only fearful for her, and sorry she hadn't more children. It was her fault, she supposed, that Matthew's concentration was leveled towards the one thing she had given him.

Then in 1849 the scourge swept the North again and after only five days of illness Victoria died and Matthew went mad. And that was no exaggeration;

for a few days he seemed to have lost his reason, and when he returned to himself it wasn't to comfort Cissie for her loss, or to take comfort from her for his loss, but to make her feel responsible for the child's death. She had never wanted Victoria, had she? he had said. She had never loved her, had she? There was only one person she had loved.

Aye, yes, perhaps two . aye, perhaps two. But her mind was on one all the time, wasn't it? The young upstart who rode in his carriage and on whom she tried to spv on her strolls over the fells.

Oh he knew, he knew; he hadn't been deceived all these wears.

With the going of Victoria the house changed. Jimmy, William, or Joe could do no riffht, whereas before they could do no wrong. He would not have any of the children visit the house; there was no more reading at nights, no music, no laughter. All their clothes were black, and the mourning went on for two years--in fact until the moment he died at the Christmas dinner.

And now this question: what was she going to do with herself?

The answer came in January of '53 when she had been in mourning for Matthew for fourteen months.

William had sent word that he wouldn't be able to get in for an hour or so as he was feeling low. Cissie knew he'd had a cold for some days and she tried to persuade him to stay in bed, but William was stubborn and did not take to bed easily.

It was a wet miserable day with flumes of sleet and a very high wind.

She put on her cloak and some heavy boots and was on the road making her way to William's house when she met Jimmy driving the cart.

"I was going to call in on you," he said; "I'm on me way to Jarrow."

"William's under the weather," she replied.

"He couldn't get in this morning."

"Well, jump up," he said laughing.

"We'll visit the sick together."

Then he turned the cart around and they made their way to William's house.

Matthew had designed the house so that the window of the parlor overlooked the valley and the village and the sweep of hills beyond and so you did not approach the front door from the road but followed a curving grass path around the side of the house to it.

Above the wind they heard the cries of the children at play in the hut to the far side of the house, but even above this there rose the voice of William, and he was shouting, "I can't do iti I tell you I can't.

An' I won't! " Then Jessie's voice stopped Cissie in her tracks and she pulled on Jimmy's arm and halted him, and they listened to their sister-in-law crying,

"Eight rooms and attics. What does she want with all them, living alone, and here eight of us in these four rooms and another coming? If you don't put it to her then I will."

Cissie and Jimmy exchanged glances. The voices were coming from the kitchen, the window of which was about three yards ahead of them.

"It's her place, she's earned it. Begod! if anybody's earned it she has. I tell you I'll not do it, not for you or God Almighty. Four rooms not big enough you say? There were ten of us in a cave out in the wilds...."

"Oh, my goodness gracious, not that again! Can't you forget that you once lived like a pig?"

This was followed by a ringing slap, and then silence, and quickly Cissie pulled Jimmy backwards and they made their way to the cart.

Jimmy turned it again and they rode back to the mill, and they didn't speak until they were in the kitchen.

Banging a fist into the palm of his hand. Jimmy exclaimed in deep anger, "By God! the nerve of it. The bloody upstart! Who does she think she is? Come from a potty little chemist's shop and brought up in rooms no bigger than match boxes behind it. I'd like to give her the length of my...."

"It's all right, it's all right. I don't mind. And you know" --she turned and confronted Jimmy"--she's right; what do I want with this place?"

"Don't be silly, our Cissie. If anybody's earned this place you have.

It's as William said. Aye"--he nodded at her" --an' it's a good job he did say it, or I'd have gone along there and lathered him me self She laughed gently now and, turning from him, let her gaze wander slowly around the kitchen; then she said quietly, "Do you know. Jimmy, I've never liked this house."

There was a stunned silence before he said, "What!" And still with her back to him she nodded her head and continued to look about her, at the brass candlesticks still shining on the mantelpiece, at the copper pans still hanging around the fireplace, at the rocking chair at one side and the leather chair and settle at the other; nothing in this kitchen had been changed from the days when Rose Watson was mistress of it.

Turning swiftly to him, she said with an eagerness he hadn't seen on her face for years, "Will you let Ada come into Newcastle with me tomorrow for a full day? Could you see to the hairns?"

He grinned slowly now, saying, "Aye. Aye, I can see to the hairns, and she'll be tickled to death. What you up to?"

"I'm going shopping. Jimmy. Yes" --she nodded slowly at him"--I'm going shopping...."

The next day, dressed in her black and driving the trap, she rode over to Jimmy's and picked up Ada, and amid waving and shouts from the children and, "Enjoy yourselves, but mind, be careful of the traffic,"

from Jimmy, they set off.

Ada, like Jimmy, was small and thin, and if there was one person she adored besides her husband it was her sister-in-law.

She had first made Cissie's acquaintance when she delivered a dress to her. For years, in fact from when she was eight years old, she had been employed in a sweat shop in Newcastle. At fourteen she had been apprenticed and gone to live in. She had worked from eight in the morning till eight at night; ten on Fridays and Saturdays. She had slept on a pallet bed on the floor with fifteen others; their food was little better than the workhouse fare; and her wage, when she was twenty, had reached the amount of five shillings a week, but that was because she was an expert cutter. The reason why she had been asked to deliver a dress to a place beyond Brockdale was that on one Sunday in a month she visited her grandmother in Jarrow and at this particular time more than half the staff were down with dysentery, they called it "the looseness." The delivery of the gown was overdue and the manageress took the opportunity of making use of the cutter. She did not tell her, because she did not know, that she would have to walk three miles from her grandmother's house to the mill.

When she arrived Cissie offered the small white- faced, pea ky-looking girl some refreshment and they had started talking. Jimmy had sat to the side and listened, and like his father before him, he was filled with compassion, and he had driven Miss Ada Ran- some, not only back to her grannie's, but all the way to Newcastle. And every Sunday during the next three months he had gone into Newcastle and brought her to the mill, which Ada likened to heaven.

And now she was going into Newcastle with Cissie to choose material, not black or brown, or grey or fawn, but as Cissie had just described, something in a red, a soft red. She said to her, "A crushed strawberry, that would suit you, Cissie. A crushed strawberry in a taffeta, perhaps with a sprig on it."

Cissie, the reins in her hands, a smile on her face, glanced at Ada and, her lips pursed tight, she moved her head in small nods before saying, "Yes, Ada, crushed strawberry, taffeta with a sprig on it."

The family was mystified at the change in their Cissie. Sarah and Charlotte hailed it with laughter and sold her two hats and two bonnets cost price of course. Bella hailed the change with sulky envy. Mary was a little shocked, William puzzled, Joe amused, and Annie didn't know what to make of . their Cissie--as a newlywed she was full of decorum-only Jimmy said nothing and waited and understood.

She did not wear the crushed strawberry with the sprig on it on the day she went on the special errand into town, for although it was spring and the sun was shining it was still rather chilly; but she wore the soft moss-green corded velvet suit with the short, tight jacket and a wide skirt that Ada had just finished tor her, and over her shoulders a short sealskin cape; on her feet, soft brown leather boots, and, almost matching the color of her hair, a hat with a sheen on it like that on a chestnut horse.

William and Joe gazed up at her from the yard, and Joe, still merry, said, "By! our Cissie, you'll have the dogs after you going into Newcastle like that." William said nothing, but he thought. What's come over her?

She smiled warmly at this particular brother: had she not him to thank for her rejuvenation?

"Gee-up there!" The sprightly cob pulling the neat trap trotted out of the yard, and Joe and William followed it to the gate and watched it along the road, after which they looked at each other, grinned, gave a little laugh, then shook their heads. It was not the first time Cissie had been to the offices of Weir and Dixon. One day in '44 she had received a letter that had been sent by railway post, which was exciting in itself. When she opened it she found it was from the solicitors stating that they would be grateful for directions regarding her money, which was accumulating. Did she desire them to invest it for her?