Robert, however, had nothing to say, and seemed willing to let Dahlia depart.

The only opponents to the plan were Mrs.Sumfit, a kindly, humble relative of the farmer's, widowed out of Sussex, very loving and fat; the cook to the household, whose waist was dimly indicated by her apron-string; and, to aid her outcries, the silently-protesting Master Gammon, an old man with the cast of eye of an antediluvian lizard, the slowest old man of his time--a sort of foreman of the farm before Robert had come to take matters in hand, and thrust both him and his master into the background.
Master Gammon remarked emphatically, once and for all, that "he never had much opinion of London." As he had never visited London, his opinion was considered the less weighty, but, as he advanced no further speech, the sins and backslidings of the metropolis were strongly brought to mind by his condemnatory utterance.

Policy and Dahlia's entreaties at last prevailed with the farmer, and so the fair girl went up to the great city.
After months of a division that was like the division of her living veins, and when the comfort of letters was getting cold, Rhoda, having previously pledged herself to secresy, though she could not guess why it was commanded, received a miniature portrait of Dahlia, so beautiful that her envy of London for holding her sister away from her, melted in gratitude.

She had permission to keep the portrait a week; it was impossible to forbear from showing it to Mrs.Sumfit, who peeped in awe, and that emotion subsiding, shed tears abundantly.

Why it was to be kept secret, they failed to inquire; the mystery was possibly not without its delights to them.