They told me what I already was sure of--that I held, and always should hold, my steadfast place in his friendship.

Nothing more.
One other fact I noticed: that a little lad, afterward discovered to be Jem Watkins, to whom had fallen the hard-working lot of the lost Bill, had somehow crept into our household as errand-boy, or gardener's boy; and being "cute," and a "scholard," was greatly patronized by Jael.

I noticed, too, that the said Jem, whenever he came in my way, in house or garden, was the most capital "little foot-page" that ever invalid had; knowing intuitively all my needs, and serving me with an unfailing devotion, which quite surprised and puzzled me at the time.
It did not afterwards.
Summer was passing.

People began to watch with anxious looks the thin harvest-fields--as Jael often told me, when she came home from her afternoon walks.

"It was piteous to see them," she said; "only July, and the quartern loaf nearly three shillings, and meal four shillings a peck." And then she would glance at our flour-mill, where for several days a week the water-wheel was as quiet as on Sundays; for my father kept his grain locked up, waiting for what, he wisely judged, might be a worse harvest than the last.