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WINNIE CORSELLIS ; OR, DEATH IN THE POT. 223

up from her butter-making to the girls sitting by her side, was thinking to herself whether Winnie was pretty or not.

“The master is just about took up with her, but yet it ain’t to say a pretty face, yet it’s pleasant to look at for all that, and I likes it,”

“What are you thinking about, Mrs. Ramsay ?” asked Winnie, suddenly, as she caught the old woman's eye fixed on her with a smile.

“Well, miss, I can’t just tell ’ee, but it weren’t nothing’ bad.”

Winnie laughed. “No, I’m sure of that. Oh, here’s Mr. Ramsay! I wonder if he’s going to earry the hay this afternoon ; we want to go into the field when he does ;” and then, turning to the farmer, who had come through the brewhouse, she continued, ‘I am afraid the children have tumbled your haycocks about shamefully, Mr. Ramsay. Trot was buried in one and Carrie in another, and when they scrambled out they -pulled all the hay down with them; we tried to put them tidy again but I don’t think we managed it very well.”

“Tumble them about as much as ever you like, miss, it won’t hurt,” said the farmer, sitting down in his arm-chair and wiping his face; “ they’ll be

carried this afternoon, so the little *uns must |

make the most of their time. It’s late hay harvest even for this country, but the weather has put us back terrible, or it would all have been got in afore you came.”

“J am very glad it wasn’t,” said Winnie, slip- ping off the table, for she knew Ramsay had come in for his lunch and thought she might be in the way if she stayed in the kitchen. ‘Come along, Trot; we will go back to mamma, for if you are

coming into the hayfields this afternoon you must |

go to sleep, and have a long rest.”

When she had left the room, Ramsay turned to his wife.

“ They’m Dudley folk, bean’t ’em ?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hammond’s married to a doctor there, and this one is to marry his partner, the gentleman as come over with them—so the nurse tells me.”

“JT see a Dudley man just now: he were over about that spotted calf.”

“ Ah,” said Mrs. Ramsay, as she shaped her half-pound pats and stamped them with the im- pression of a swan, “I'll be glad when that calf’s gone, it do take a sight of milk. Did he make you a pretty fair offer?”

“Nothing to grumble at. I suppose we shall have a deal together, as you wants to get quit on it. But he were talking a goodish bit about Dudley ; they’m dying there by dozens.”

“Lor! good gracious, you don’t say so. Dying! what of ?”

“The cholera ; it’s terrible bad, he says.”

“Ts it, to be sure now? Poor things, it must be bad for ’em, shut up together, with such a sickness about.”

“T suppose that’s why they come up?” re- marked Ramsay, jerking his head towards the parlour, “and very wise too.”

“Well, now, I shouldn’t wonder,” replied Mrs. Ramsay, “ but it must be a trouble to ’em to leave their men folk in it. Happen they don’t know how bad it is ?”

‘Best not say any thing to them, then—it would only trouble them worse. The less they knows the better, and there won’t no one come anigh here to tell them.”

In consequence of which decision, Winnie and the children, Mrs. Hammond and the nurse, all spent a merry afternoon in the hay-field ; Carrie had rides on a real live horse, and even Trot was held for a few minutes on one of their broad backs, and jogged along for a little way in front of the cart. It was very hot, hot enough to please the farmers, who were longing for sunshine to bring on the grain crops and dry the land, which was sodden and heavy with moisture ; but the sun, that ripened the corn and saved the turnips from rotting as they stood, drew misty clouds of deadly vapours from the evil pools and brimming cess-pits which lurked about in hidden corners of the crowded towns. The very cause which might have been their salvation was now the destruction of the inhabitants. Enough rain had | fallen to have cleansed away pollution from drains and sewers, and washed them pure, had but a fair chance been given to it; but though the cry had been raised that something ought to be done, nothing had been done, and God’s rain, which would have washed away the filth, was kept im- prisoned in stagnant holes, and choked up ditches tillit filled them to the brim ; and then charged with impurity, found for itself new channels, creeping slowly under cottage-floors and winding down alleys and courts in slowly oozing streams of deadly filth. And now, when the sun came out, shedding hot rays upon these little stagnant puddles and sluggish currents, he drew out of every one of them a seed of disease which fell here upon a strong man, there upon a little child, now taking root in the houses of the rich, now falling upon the dwellers in the | courts and lanes where the poison was bred, but every where bringing forth its bitter fruit of misery | and death.

Little did Winnie know of what was going on in the streets of Dudley, as she sat in the hay-field when the last load was drawn, and the children had gone in to tea. The west wind was blowing softly across her face and lifting her hair with a gentle touch, but her eyes wore an anxious look

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