And she, all the while, so simple, so sane--the ordinary good woman, with the ordinary woman's hunger for the common blessings of life--a little love, a little chat, a little prosaic well-being! She had had two sons--they were gone.

She had been the proud wife 'o' t' cliverest mon atwixt Sheffield an Manchester,' as Frimley and the adjacent villages had once expressed it, when every mother that respected herself sent her children to 'Lias Dawson's school.

And the mysterious chances of a summer night had sent home upon her hands a poor incapable, ruined in mind and body, who was to live henceforward upon her charity, wandering amid the chaotic wreck and debris of his former self.
Well, she took up her burden! The straggling village on Frimley Moor was mainly inhabited by a colony of silk hand-loom weavers--the descendants of French prisoners in the great war, and employed for the most part by a firm at Leck.

Very dainty work was done at Frimley, and very beautiful stuffs made.

The craft went from father to son.