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“I shall not tell anybody. Is it from that young man?”

“I think go.” Anna slowly produced the letter, saying: “Then will you read it to me, ma’am ?”

This was the secret of Anna's embarrassment and flutterings, She could neither read nor write. She had grown up under the care of an aunt by marriage, at one of the lonely hamlets on the Great Mid-Wessex Plain where, even in days of national education, there had been no school within a distance of two miles. Her aunt was an ignorant woman; there had been nobody to investigate Anna’s circumstances, nobody to care about her learning the rudiments, though, as often in such cases, she had been well fed and clothed and not unkindly treated. Since she had come to live at Melchester with Mrs, Harnham, the latter, who took a kindly interest in the girl, had taught her to speak correctly, in which accomplishment Anna showed considerable readiness, as is not unusual with the illiterate; and soon became quite fluent in the use of her mistress’s phraseology. Mrs. Harnham also insisted upon, her getting a spelling and copy book, and beginning to practise in these, Anna was slower in this branch of her education, and meanwhile here was the letter.

Edith Harnham’s large dark eyes expressed some interest in the contents, though, in her character of mere interpreter, she threw into her tone as much as she could of mechanical passiveness, She read the short epistle on to its concluding sentence, which idly requested Anna to send him a tender answer.

“Now — you'll do it for me, won't you, dear mistress?” said Anna, eagerly. ‘And you'll do it as well as ever you can, please? Because I couldn’t bear him to think I am not able to do it myself. I should sink into the earth with shame if he knew that!”