Mrs. Fountain, however, only shook her head.

"I don't think Alan's settled anything yet. Only Mrs. Denton's afraid.—There was somebody came to see it a few days ago——"

"He certainly ought not to sell it," repeated Laura with emphasis. "He has to think of the people that come after. What will they care for orphanages? He only holds the picture in trust."

"There will be no one to come after," said Augustina slowly. "For of course he will never marry."

"Is he too great a saint for that too?" cried Laura. "Then all I can say, Augustina, is that—it—would—do him a great deal of good."

She beat her little foot on the ground impatiently, pointing the words.

"You don't know anything about him, Laura," said Mrs. Fountain, with an attempt at spirit. Then she added reproachfully: "And I'm sure he wants to be kind to you."

"He thinks me a little heretical toad, thank you!" said Laura, spinning round on the bare boards, and dropping a curtsey to the Romney. "But never mind, Augustina—we shall get on quite properly. Now, aren't there a great many more rooms to see?"

Augustina rose uncertainly. "There is the chapel, of course," she said, "and Alan's study——"

"Oh! we needn't go there," said Laura hastily. "But show me the chapel."

Mr. Helbeck was still absent, and they had been exploring Bannisdale. It was a melancholy progress they had been making through a house that had once—when Augustina left it—stood full of the hoardings and the treasures of generations, and was now empty and despoiled.

It was evident that, for his sister's welcome, Mr. Helbeck had gathered into the drawing-room, as into her bedroom upstairs, the best of what still remained to him. Chairs and tables, and straight-lined sofas, some of one date, some of another, collected from the garrets and remote corners of the old house, and covered with the oddest variety of faded stuffs, had been stiffly set out by Mrs. Denton upon an old Turkey carpet, whereof the rents and patches had been concealed as much as possible. Here at least was something of a cosmos—something of order and of comfort.

The hall too, and the dining-room, in spite of their poor new furnishings, were still human and habitable. But most of the rooms on which Laura and Mrs. Fountain had been making raid were like that first one Laura had visited, mere homes of lumber and desolation. Blinds drawn; dust-motes dancing in the stray shafts of light that struck across the gloom of the old walls and floors. Here and there some lingering fragment of fine furniture; but as a rule bareness, poverty, and void—nothing could be more piteous, or, to Mrs. Fountain's memory, more surprising. For some years before she left Bannisdale, her father had not known where to turn for a pound of ready money. Yet when she fled from it, the house and its treasures were still intact.

The explanation of course was very simple. Alan Helbeck had been living upon his house, as upon any other capital. Or rather he had been making alms of it. The house stood gashed and bare that Catholic orphans might be put to school—was that it? Laura hardly listened to Augustina's plaintive babble as they crossed the hall. It was all about Alan, of course—Alan's virtues, Alan's charities. As for the orphans, the girl hated the thought of them. Grasping little wretches! She could see them all in a sanctimonious row, their eyes cast up, and rosaries—like the one Augustina was always trying to hide from her—in their ugly little hands.

They turned down a long stone passage leading to the chapel. As they neared the chapel door there was a sound of voices from the hall at their back.

"It's Alan," said Augustina peering, "and Father Bowles!"

She hurried back to meet them, skirts and cap-strings flying. Laura stood still.

But after a few words with his sister, Helbeck came up to his guest with outstretched hand.

"I hope we have not kept you waiting for dinner. May I introduce Father Bowles to you?"

Laura bowed with all the stiffness of which a young back is capable. She saw an old grey-haired priest, with a round face and a pair of chubby hands, which he constantly held crossed or clasped upon his breast. His long irregular-mouth seemed to fold over at the corners above his very small and childish chin. The mouth and the light blue eyes wore an expression of rather mincing gentleness. His short figure, though bent a little with years, was still vigorous, and his gait quick and bustling.

He addressed Miss Fountain with a lisping and rather obsequious politeness, asking a great many unnecessary questions about her journey and her arrival.

Laura answered coldly. But when he passed to Mrs. Fountain, Augustina was all effusion.

"When I think what has been granted to us since I was here last!" she said to the priest as they moved on,—clasping her hands, and flushing.

"The dear Bishop took such trouble about it," he said in a little murmuring voice. "It was not easy—but the Church loves to content her children."

Involuntarily Laura glanced at Helbeck.

"My sister refers to the permission which has been granted to us to reserve the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel," he said gravely. "It is a privilege we never enjoyed till last year."

Laura made no reply.

"Shall I slip away?" she thought, looking round her.

But at that moment Mr. Helbeck lifted the heavy latch of the chapel door; and her young curiosity was too strong for her. She followed the others.

Mr. Helbeck held the door open for her.

"You will perhaps care to look at the frescoes," he said to her as she hurried past him. She nodded, and walked quickly away to the left, by herself. Then she turned and looked about her.

It was the first time that she had entered a Catholic church, and every detail was new to her. She watched the other three sign themselves with holy water and drop low on one knee before the altar. So that was the altar. She stared at it with a scornful repugnance; yet her pulse quickened as though what she saw excited her. What was that erection above it, with a veil of red silk drawn round it—and why was that lamp burning in front of it?

She recalled Mr. Helbeck's words—"permission to reserve the Blessed Sacrament." Then, in a flash, a hundred vague memories, the deposit of a hearsay knowledge, enlightened her. She knew and remembered much less than any ordinary girl would have done. But still, in the main, she guessed at what was passing. That of course was the Sacrament, before which Mr. Helbeck and the others were kneeling!—for instinctively she felt that it was to no empty shrine the adoration of those silent figures was being offered.

Fragments from Augustina's talk at Folkestone came back to her. Once she had overheard some half-whispered conversation between her stepmother and a Catholic friend, from which she had vaguely understood that the "Blessed Sacrament" was kept in the Catholic churches, was always there, and that the faithful "visited" it—that these "visits" were indeed specially recommended as a means to holiness. And she recalled how, as they came home from their daily walk to the beach, Mrs. Fountain would disappear from her, through the shadowy door of a Catholic church that stood in the same street as their lodgings—how she would come home half an hour afterwards, shaken with fresh ardours, fresh remorse.

But how could such a thing be allowed, be possible, in a private chapel—in a room that was really part of a private house? GOD—the Christ of Calvary—in that gilt box, upon that altar!

The young girl's arms fell by her side in a sudden rigidity. A wave of the most passionate repulsion swept through her. What a gross, what an intolerable superstition!—how was she to live with it, beside it? The next instant it was as though her hand clasped her father's—clinging to him proudly, against this alien world. Why should she feel lonely?—the little heretic, left standing there alone in her distant corner. Let her rather rejoice that she was her father's daughter!

She drew herself up, and coolly looked about her. The worshippers had risen; long as the time had seemed to Laura, they had only been two or three minutes on their knees; and she could see that Augustina was talking eagerly to her brother, pointing now to the walls, now to the altar.

It seemed as though Augustina were no less astonished than her stepdaughter by the magnificence of the chapel. Was it all new,—the frescoes, the altar with its marble and its gold, the white figure of the Virgin, which gleamed above the small side-altar to the left? It had the air of newness and of costliness, an air which struck the eye all the more sharply because of the contrast between it and the penury, the starvation, of the great house that held the chapel in its breast.

But while Laura was still wondering at the general impression of rich beauty, at the Lenten purple of the altar, at the candelabra, and the perfume, certain figures and colours on the wall close to her seized her, thrusting the rest aside. On either side of the altar, the walls to right and left, from the entrance up to the sanctuary, were covered with what appeared to be recent painting—painting, indeed, that was still in the act. On either hand, long rows of life-sized saints, men and women, turned their adoring faces towards the Christ looking down upon them from a crucifix above the tabernacle. On the north wall, about half the row was unfinished; faces, haloes, drapery, strongly outlined in red, still waited for the completing hand of the artist. The rest glowed and burned with colour—colour the most singular, the most daring. The carnations and rose colours, the golds and purples, the blues and lilacs and greens—in the whole concert of tone, in spite of its general simplicity of surface, there was something at once ravishing and troubling, something that spoke as it were from passion to passion.

Laura's nature felt the thrill of it at once, just as she had felt the thrill of the sunshine lighting up the tapestry of her room.

"Why isn't it crude and hideous?" she asked herself, in a marvel. "But it isn't. One never saw such blues—except in the sea—or such greens—and rose! And the angels between!—and the flowers under their feet!—Heavens! how lovely! Who did it?"

"Do you admire the frescoes?" said a little voice behind her.

She turned hastily, and saw Father Bowles smiling upon her, his plump white hands clasped in front of him, as usual. It was an attitude which seemed to make the simplest words sound intimate and possessive. Laura shrank from, it in quick annoyance.

"They are very strange, and—and startling," she said stiffly, moving as far away from the grey-haired priest as possible. "Who painted them?"

"Mr. Helbeck first designed them. But they were carried out for a time by a youth of great genius." Father Bowles dwelt softly upon the word "ge-nius," as though he loved it. "He was once a lad from these parts, but has now become a Jesuit. So the work was stopped."

"What a pity!" said Laura impetuously. "He ought to have been a painter."

The priest smiled, and made her an odd little bow. Then, without saying anything more about the artist, he chattered on about the frescoes and the chapel, as though he had beside him the most sympathetic of listeners. Nothing that he said was the least interesting or striking; and Laura, in a passion of silent dislike, kept up a steady movement towards the door all the time.

In the passage outside Mrs. Fountain was lingering alone. And when Laura appeared she caught hold of her stepdaughter and detained her while the priest passed on. Laura looked at her in surprise, and Mrs. Fountain, in much agitation, whispered in the girl's ear:

"Oh, Laura—do remember, dear!—don't ask Alan about those pictures—those frescoes—by young Williams. I can tell you some time—and you might say something to hurt him—poor Alan!"

Laura drew herself away.

"Why should I say anything to hurt him? What's the mystery?"

"I can't tell you now"—Mrs. Fountain looked anxiously towards the hall. "People have been so hard on Alan—so unkind about it! It's been a regular persecution. And you wouldn't understand—wouldn't sympathise——"

"I really don't care to know about it, Augustina! And I'm so hungry—famished! Look, there's Mr. Helbeck signing to us. Joy!—that's dinner."

* * * * *

Laura expected the midday meal with some curiosity. But she saw no signs of austerity. Mr. Helbeck pressed the roast chicken on Father Bowles, took pains that he should enjoy a better bottle of wine than usual, and as to himself ate and drank very moderately indeed, but like anybody else. Laura could only imagine that it was not seemly to outdo your priest.

The meal of course was served in the simplest way, and all the waiting was done by Mr. Helbeck, who would allow nobody to help him in the task.

The conversation dragged. Laura and her host talked a little about the country and the weather. Father Bowles and Augustina tried to pick up the dropped threads of thirteen years; and Mrs. Fountain was alternately eager for Whinthorpe gossip, or reduced to an abrupt unhappy silence by some memory of the past.

Suddenly Father Bowles got up from his chair, ran across the room to the window with his napkin in his hand, and pounced eagerly upon a fly that was buzzing on the pane. Then he carefully opened the window, and flicked the dead thing off the sill.

"I beg your pardon," he said humbly to Mrs. Fountain as he returned to his seat. "It was a nasty fly. I can't abide 'em. I always think of Beelzebub, who was the prince of the flies."

Laura's mouth twitched with laughter. She promised herself to make a study of Father Bowles.

And, indeed, he was a character in his own small way. He was a priest of an old-fashioned type, with no pretensions to knowledge or to manners. Wherever he went he was a meek and accommodating guest, for his recollection went back to days when a priest coming to a private house to say Mass would as likely as not have his meals in the pantry. And he was naturally of a gentle and yielding temper—though rather sly.

But he had several tricks as curious as they were persistent. Not even the presence of his bishop could make him spare a bluebottle. And he had, on the other hand, a peculiar passion for the smell of wax. He would blow out a candle on the altar before the end of Mass that he might enjoy the smell of it. He disliked Jesuits, and religious generally, if the truth were known; excepting only the orphanage nuns, who knew his weaknesses and were kind to them. He had no love for modern innovations, or modern devotions; there was a hidden Gallican strain in him; and he firmly believed that in the old days before Catholic emancipation, and before the Oxford movement, the Church made more converts than she did now.

* * * * *

Towards the end of the lunch Laura inquired of Mr. Helbeck whether any conveyance was to be got in the village.

"I wish to go to Browhead Farm this afternoon," she said rather shortly.

"Certainly," said Helbeck. "Certainly. I will see that something is found for you."

But his voice had no cordiality, and Laura at once thought him ungracious.

"Oh, pray don't give yourself any trouble," she said, flushing, "I can walk to the village."

Helbeck paused.

"If you could wait till to-morrow," he said after a moment, "I could promise you the pony. Unfortunately he is busy this afternoon."

"Oh, do wait, Laura!" cried Augustina. "There is so much unpacking to do."

"Very well," said the girl unwillingly.

As she turned away from him Helbeck's look followed her. She was in a dress of black serge, which followed the delicate girlish frame with perfect simplicity, and was relieved at the neck and wrists with the plainest of white collars and cuffs. But there was something so brilliant in the hair, so fawnlike in the carriage of the head, that she seemed to Helbeck to be all elegance; had he been asked to describe her, he would have said she was in grande toilette. Little as he spoke to her, he found himself perpetually conscious of her. Her evident—childishly evident—dislike of her new surroundings half amused, half embarrassed him. He did not know what topic to start with her; soon, perhaps, he might have a difficulty in keeping the peace! It was all very absurd.

After luncheon they gathered in the hall for a while, Father Bowles talking eagerly with Helbeck and Augustina about "orphans" and "new buildings." Laura stood apart awhile—then went for her hat.

When she reappeared, in walking dress—with Fricka at her heels—Helbeck opened the heavy outer door for her.

"May I have Bruno?" she said.

Helbeck turned and whistled.

"You are not afraid?" he said, smiling, and looking at Fricka.

"Oh, dear no! I spent an hour this morning introducing them."

At that moment Bruno came bounding up. He looked from his master to Laura in her hat, and seemed to hesitate. Then, as she descended the steps, he sprang after her. Laura began to run; the two dogs leapt about her; her light voice, checking or caressing, came back to Helbeck on the spring wind. He watched her and her companions so long as they were in sight—the golden hair among the trees, the dancing steps of the girl, the answering frolic of the dogs.

Then he turned back to his sister, his grave mouth twitching.

"How thankful she is to get rid of us!"

He laughed out. The priest laughed, too, more softly.

"It was the first time, I presume, that Miss Fountain had ever been within a Catholic church?" he said to Augustina.

Augustina flushed.

"Of course it is the first time. Oh! Alan, you can't think how strange it is to her."

She looked rather piteously at her brother.

"So I perceive," he said. "You told me something, but I had not realised——"

"You see, Alan—" cried Augustina, watching her brother's face,—"it was with the greatest difficulty that her mother got Stephen to consent even to her being baptized. He opposed it for a long time."

Father Bowles murmured something under his breath.

Helbeck paused for a moment, then said:

"What was her mother like?"

"Everyone at Cambridge used to say she was 'a sweet woman'—but—but Stephen,—well, you know, Alan, Stephen always had his way! I always wonder she managed to persuade him about the baptism."

She coloured still more deeply as she spoke, and her nervous infirmity became more pronounced. Alas! it was not only with the first wife that Stephen had had his way! Her own marriage had begun to seem to her a mere sinful connection. Poor soul—poor Augustina!

Her brother must have divined something of what was passing in her mind, for he looked down upon her with a peculiar gentleness.

"People are perhaps more ready to talk of that responsibility than to take it," he said kindly. "But, Augustina,—" his voice changed,—"how pretty she is!—You hardly prepared me——"

Father Bowles modestly cast down his eyes. These were not questions that concerned him. But Helbeck went on, speaking with decision, and looking at his sister:

"I confess—her great attractiveness makes me a little anxious—about the connection with the Masons. Have you ever seen any of them, Augustina?"

No—Augustina had seen none of them. She believed Stephen had particularly disliked the mother, the widow of his cousin, who now owned the farm jointly with her son.

"Well, no," said Helbeck dryly, "I don't suppose he and she would have had much in common."

"Isn't she a dreadful Protestant—Alan?"

"Oh, she's just a specimen of the ordinary English Bible-worship run mad," he said, carelessly. "She is a strange woman, very well known about here. And there's a foolish parson living near them, up in the hills, who makes her worse. But it's the son I'm thinking of."

"Why, Alan—isn't he respectable?"

"Not particularly. He's a splendid athletic fellow—doing his best to make himself a blackguard, I'm afraid. I've come across him once or twice, as it happens. He's not a desirable cousin for Miss Fountain—that I can vouch for! And unluckily," he smiled, "Miss Fountain won't hear any good of this house at Browhead Farm."

Even Augustina drew herself up proudly.

"My dear Alan, what does it matter what that sort of people think?"

He shook his head.

"It's a queer business. They were mixed up with young Williams."

Augustina started.

"Mrs. Mason was a great friend of his mother, who died. They hate me like poison. However——"

The priest interposed.

"Mrs. Mason is a very violent, a most unseemly woman," he said, in his mincing voice. "And the father—the old man—who is now dead, was concerned in the rioting near the bridge——"

"When Alan was struck? Mrs. Denton told me! How abominable!"

Augustina raised her hands in mingled reprobation and distress.

Helbeck looked annoyed.

"That doesn't matter one brass farthing," he said, in some haste. "Father Bowles was much worse treated than I on that occasion. But you see the whole thing is unlucky—it makes it difficult to give Miss Fountain the hints one would like to give her."

He threw himself down beside his sister, talking to her in low tones. Father Bowles took up the local paper.

Presently Augustina broke out—with another wringing of the hands.

"Don't put it on me, my dear Alan! I tell you—Laura has always done exactly what she liked since she was a baby."

Mr. Helbeck rose. His face and air already expressed a certain haughtiness; and at his sister's words there was a very definite tightening of the shoulders.

"I do not intend to have Hubert Mason hanging about the house," he said quietly, as he thrust his hands into his pockets.

"Of course not!—but she wouldn't expect it," cried Augustina in dismay. "It's the keeping her away from them, that's the difficulty. She thinks so much of her cousins, Alan. They're her father's only relations. I know she'll want to be with them half her time!"

"For love of them—or dislike of us? Oh! I dare say it will be all right," he added abruptly. "Father Bowles, shall I drive you half-way? The pony will be round directly."



CHAPTER IV

It was a Sunday morning—bright and windy. Miss Fountain was driving a shabby pony through the park of Bannisdale—driving with a haste and glee that sent the little cart spinning down the road.

Six hours—she calculated—till she need see Bannisdale again. Her cousins would ask her to dinner and to tea. Augustina and Mr. Helbeck might have all their Sunday antics to themselves. There were several priests coming to luncheon—and a function in the chapel that afternoon. Laura flicked the pony sharply as she thought of it. Seven miles between her and it? Joy!

Nevertheless, she did not get rid of the old house and its suggestions quite as easily as she wished. The park and the river had many windings. Again and again the grey gabled mass thrust itself upon her attention, recalling each time, against her will, the face of its owner.

A high brow—hollows in the temples, deep hollows in the cheeks—pale blue eyes—a short and pointed beard, greyish-black like the hair—the close whiskers black, too, against the skin—a general impression of pallor, dark lines, strong shadows, melancholy force—

She burst out laughing.

A pose!—nothing in the world but a pose. There was a wretched picture of Charles I. in the dining-room—a daub "after" some famous thing, she supposed—all eyes and hair, long face, and lace collar. Mr. Helbeck was "made up" to that—she was sure of it. He had found out the likeness, and improved upon it. Oh! if one could only present him with the collar and blue ribbon complete!

"—Cut his head off, and have done with him!" she said aloud, whipping up the pony, and laughing at her own petulance.

Who could live in such a house—such an atmosphere?

As she drove along, her mind was all in a protesting whirl. On her return from her walk with the dogs the day before, she had found a service going on in the chapel, Father Bowles officiating, and some figures in black gowns and white-winged coifs assisting. She had fled to her own room, but when she came down again, the black-garbed "Sisters" were still there, and she had been introduced to them. Ugh! what manners! Must one always, if one was a Catholic, make that cloying, hypocritical impression? "Three of them kissed me," she reminded herself, in a quiver of wrath.

They were Sisters from the orphanage apparently, or one of the orphanages, and there had been endless talk of new buildings and money, while she, Laura, sat dumb in her corner looking at old photographs of the house. Helbeck, indeed, had not talked much. While the black women were chattering with Augustina and Father Bowles, he had stood, mostly silent, under the picture of his great-grandmother, only breaking through his reverie from time to time to ask or answer a question. Was he pondering the sale of the great-grandmother, or did he simply know that his silence and aloofness were picturesque, that they compelled other people's attention, and made him the centre of things more effectively than more ordinary manners could have done? In recalling him the girl had an impatient sense of something commanding; of something, moreover, that held herself under observation. "One thinks him shy at first, or awkward—nothing of the sort! He is as proud as Lucifer. Very soon one sees that he is just looking out for his own way in everything.

"And as for temper!——"

After the Sisters departed, a young architect had appeared at supper. A point of difference had arisen between him and Mr. Helbeck. He was to be employed, it appeared, in the enlargement of this blessed orphanage. Mr. Helbeck, no doubt, with a view to his pocket—to do him justice, there seemed to be no other pocket concerned than his—was of opinion that certain existing buildings could be made use of in the new scheme. The architect—a nervous young fellow, with awkward manners, and the ambitions of an artist—thought not, and held his own, insistently. The discussion grew vehement. Suddenly Helbeck lost his temper.

"Mr. Munsey! I must ask you to give more weight, if you please, to my wishes in this matter! They may be right or wrong—but it would save time, perhaps, if we assumed that they would prevail."

The note of anger in the voice made every one look up. The Squire stood erect a moment; crumpled in his hand a half-sheet of paper on which young Munsey had been making some calculations, and flung it into the fire. Augustina sat cowering. The young man himself turned white, bowed, and said nothing. While Father Bowles, of course, like the old tabby that he was, had at once begun to purr conciliation.

"Would I have stood meek and mum if I'd been the young man!" thought Laura. "Would I! Oh! if I'd had the chance! And he should not have made up so easily, either."

For she remembered, also, how, after Father Bowles was gone, she had come in from the garden to find Mr. Helbeck and the architect pacing the long hall together, on what seemed to be the friendliest of terms. For nearly an hour, while she and Augustina sat reading over the fire, the colloquy went on.

Helbeck's tones then were of the gentlest; the young man too spoke low and eagerly, pressing his plans. And once when Laura looked up from her book, she had seen Helbeck's arm resting for a moment on the young fellow's shoulder. Oh! no doubt Mr. Helbeck could make himself agreeable when he chose—and struggling architects must put up with the tempers of their employers.

All the more did Miss Fountain like to think that the Squire could compel no court from her.

She recalled that when Mr. Munsey had said good-night, and they three were alone in the firelit hall, Helbeck had come to stand beside her. He had looked down upon her with an air which was either kindness or weariness; he had been willing—even, she thought, anxious to talk with her. But she did not mean to be first trampled on, then patronised, like the young man. So Mr. Helbeck had hardly begun—with that occasional timidity which sat so oddly on his dark and strong physique—to speak to her of the two Sisters of Charity who had been his guests in the afternoon, when she abruptly discovered it was time to say good-night. She winced a little as she remembered the sudden stiffening of his look, the careless touch of his hand.

* * * * *

The day was keen and clear. A nipping wind blew beneath the bright sun, and the opening buds had a parched and hindered look. But to Laura the air was wine, and the country all delight. She was mounting the flank of a hill towards a straggling village. Straight along the face of the hill lay her road, past the villages and woods that clothed the hill slope, till someone should show her the gate beyond which lay the rough ascent to Browhead Farm.

Above her, now, to her right, rose a craggy fell with great screes plunging sheer down into the woods that sheltered the village; below, in the valley-plain, stretched the purples and greens of the moss; the rivers shone in the sun as they came speeding from the mountains to the sea; and in the far distance the heights of Lakeland made one pageant with the sun and the clouds—peak after peak thrown blue against the white, cloud after cloud breaking to show the dappled hills below, in such a glory of silver and of purple, such a freshness of atmosphere and light, that mere looking soon became the most thrilling, the most palpable of joys. Laura's spirits began to sing and soar, with the larks and the blackcaps!

Then, when the village was gone, came a high stretch of road, looking down upon the moss and all its bounding fells, which ran out upon its purple face like capes upon a sea. And these nearer fields—what were these thick white specks upon the new-made furrows? Up rose the gulls for answer; and the girl felt the sea-breath from their dazzling wings, and turned behind her to look for that pale opening in the south-west through which the rivers passed.

And beyond the fields a wood—such a wood as made Laura's south-country eyes stand wide with wonder! Out she jumped, tied the pony's rein to a gate beside the road, and ran into the hazel brushwood with little cries of pleasure. A Westmoreland wood in daffodil time—it was nothing more and nothing less. But to this child with the young passion in her blood, it was a dream, an ecstasy. The golden flowers, the slim stalks, rose from a mist of greenish-blue, made by their speary leaf amid the encircling browns and purples, the intricate stem and branch-work of the still winter-bound hazels. Never were daffodils in such a wealth before! They were flung on the fell-side through a score of acres, in sheets and tapestries of gold,—such an audacious, unreckoned plenty as went strangely with the frugal air and temper of the northern country, with the bare walled fields, the ruggedness of the crags above, and the melancholy of the treeless marsh below. And within this common lavishness, all possible delicacy, all possible perfection of the separate bloom and tuft—each foot of ground had its own glory. For below the daffodils there was a carpet of dark violets, so dim and close that it was their scent first bewrayed them; and as Laura lay gathering with her face among the flowers, she could see behind their gold, and between the hazel stems, the light-filled greys and azures of the mountain distance. Each detail in the happy whole struck on the girl's eager sense and made there a poem of northern spring—spring as the fell-country sees it, pure, cold, expectant, with flashes of a blossoming beauty amid the rocks and pastures, unmatched for daintiness and joy.

Presently Laura found herself sitting—half crying!—on a mossy tuft, looking along the wood to the distance. What was it in this exquisite country that seized upon her so—that spoke to her in this intimate, this appealing voice?

Why, she was of it—she belonged to it—she felt it in her veins! Old inherited things leapt within her—or it pleased her to think so. It was as though she stretched out her arms to the mountains and fields, crying to them, "I am not a stranger—draw me to you—my life sprang from yours!" A host of burning and tender thoughts ran through her. Their first effect was to remind her of the farm and of her cousins; and she sprang up, and went back to the cart.

On they rattled again, downhill through the wood, and up on the further side—still always on the edge of the moss. She loved the villages, and their medley of grey houses wedged among the rocks; she loved the stone farms with their wide porches, and the white splashes on their grey fronts; she loved the tufts of fern in the wall crannies, the limestone ribs and bonework of the land breaking everywhere through the pastures, the incomparable purples of the woods, and the first brave leafing of the larches and the sycamores. Never had she so given her heart to any new world; and through her delight flashed the sorest, tenderest thoughts of her father. "Oh! papa—oh, papa!" she said to herself again and again in a little moan. Every day perhaps he had walked this road as a child, and she could still see herself as a child, in a very dim vision, trotting beside him down the Browhead Road. She turned at last into the fell-gate to which a passing boy directed her, with a long breath that was almost a sob.

She had given them no notice; but surely, surely they would be glad to see her!

They? She tried to split up the notion, to imagine the three people she was going to see. Cousin Elizabeth—the mother? Ah! she knew her, for they had never liked Cousin Elizabeth. She herself could dimly remember a hard face; an obstinate voice raised in discussion with her father. Yet it was Cousin Elizabeth who was the Fountain born, who had carried the little family property as her dowry to her husband James Mason. For the grandfather had been free to leave it as he chose, and on the death of his eldest son—who had settled at the farm after his marriage, and taken the heavy work of it off his father's shoulders—the old man had passionately preferred to leave it to the strong, capable granddaughter, who was already provided with a lover, who understood the land, moreover, and could earn and "addle" as he did, rather than to his bookish milksop of a second son, so richly provided for already, in his father's contemptuous opinion, by the small government post at Newcastle.

"Let us always thank God, Laura, that my grandfather was a brute to yours!" Stephen Fountain would say to his girl on the rare occasions when he could be induced to speak of his family at all. "But for that I might be a hedger and ditcher to this day."

Well, but Cousin Elizabeth's children? Laura herself had some vague remembrance of them. As the pony climbed the steep lane she shut her eyes and tried hard to recall them. The fair-haired boy—rather fat and masterful—who had taken her to find the eggs of a truant hen in a hedge behind the house—and had pushed her into a puddle on the way home because she had broken one? Then the girl, the older girl Polly, who had cleaned her shoes for her, and lent her a pinafore? No! Laura opened her eyes again—it was no good straining to remember. Too many years had rolled between that early visit and her present self—years during which there had been no communication of any sort between Stephen Fountain and his cousins.

Why had Augustina been so trying and tiresome about the Masons? Instead of flying to her cousins on the earliest possible opportunity, here was a whole fortnight gone since her arrival, and it was not till this Sunday morning that Laura had been able to achieve her visit. Augustina had been constantly ailing or fretful; either unwilling to be left alone, or possessed by absurd desires for useless trifles, only to be satisfied by Laura's going to shop in Whinthorpe. And such melancholy looks whenever the Masons were mentioned—coupled with so formal a silence on Mr. Helbeck's part! What did it all mean? No doubt her relations were vulgar, low-born folk!—but she did not ask Mr. Helbeck or her stepmother to entertain them. At last there had been a passage of arms between her and her stepmother. Perhaps Mr. Helbeck had overheard it, for immediately afterwards he had emerged from his study into the hall, where she and Augustina were sitting.

"Miss Fountain—may I ask—do you wish to be sent into Whinthorpe on Sunday morning?"

She had fronted him at once.

"No, thank you, Mr. Helbeck. I don't go to church—I never did with papa."

Had she been defiant? He surely had been stiff.

"Then, perhaps you would like the pony—for your visit? He is quite at your service for the day. Would that suit you?"

"Perfectly."

* * * * *

So here she was—at last!—climbing up and up into the heart of the fells. The cloud-pageant round the high mountains, the valley with its flashing streams, its distant sands, and widening sea—she had risen as it seemed above them all; they lay beneath her in a map-like unity. She could have laughed and sung out of sheer physical joy in the dancing air—in the play of the cloud gleams and shadows as they swept across her, chased by the wind. All about her the little mountain sheep were feeding in the craggy "intaks" or along the edges of the tiny tumbling streams; and at intervals amid the reds and yellows of the still wintry grass rose great wind-beaten hollies, sharp and black against the blue distance, marching beside her, like scattered soldiers, up the height.

Not a house to be seen, save on the far slopes of distant hills—not a sound, but the chink of the stone-chat, or the fall of lonely water.

Soon the road, after its long ascent, began to dip; a few trees appeared in a hollow, then a gate and some grey walls.

Laura jumped from the cart. Beyond the gate, the road turned downward a little, and a great block of barns shut the farmhouse from view till she was actually upon it.

But there it was at last—the grey, roughly built house, that she still vaguely remembered, with the whitewashed porch, the stables and cowsheds opposite, the little garden to the side, the steep fell behind.

She stood with her hand on the pony, looking at the house in some perplexity. Not a soul apparently had heard her coming. Nothing moved in the farmhouse or outside it. Was everybody at church? But it was nearly one o'clock.

The door under the deep porch had no knocker, and she looked in vain for a bell. All she could do was to rap sharply with the handle of her whip.

No answer. She rapped again—louder and louder. At last in the intervals of knocking, she became conscious of a sound within—something deep and continuous, like the buzzing of a gigantic bee.

She put her ear to the door, listening. Then all her face dissolved in laughter. She raised her arm and brought the whip-handle down noisily on the old blistered door, so that it shook again.

"Hullo!"

There was a sudden sound of chairs overturned, or dragged along a flagged floor. Then staggering steps—and the door was opened.

"I say—what's all this—what are you making such a damned noise for?"

Inside stood a stalwart young man, still half asleep, and drawing his hand irritably across his blinking eyes.

"How do you do, Mr. Mason?"

The young man drew himself together with a start. Suddenly he perceived that the young girl standing in the shade of the porch was not his sister, but a stranger. He looked at her with astonishment,—at the elegance of her dress, and the neatness of her small gloved hand.

"I beg your pardon, Miss, I'm sure! Did you want anything?"

The visitor laughed. "Yes, I want a good deal! I came up to see my cousins—you're my cousin—though of course you don't remember me. I thought—perhaps—you'd ask me to dinner."

The young man's yawns ceased. He stared with all his eyes, instinctively putting his hair and collar straight.

"Well, I'm afraid I don't know who you are, Miss," he said at last, putting out his hand in perplexity to meet hers. "Will you walk in?"

"Not before you know who I am!"—said Laura, still laughing—"I'm Laura Fountain. Now do you know?"

"What—Stephen Fountain's daughter—as married Miss Helbeck?" said the young man in wonder. His face, which had been at first vague and heavy with sleep, began to recover its natural expression.

Laura surveyed him. He had a square, full chin and an upper lip slightly underhung. His straight fair hair straggled loose over his brow. He carried his head and shoulders well, and was altogether a finely built, rather magnificent young fellow, marred by a general expression that was half clumsy, half insolent.

"That's it," she said, in answer to his question—"I'm staying at Bannisdale, and I came up to see you all.—Where's Cousin Elizabeth?"

"Mother, do you mean?—Oh! she's at church."

"Why aren't you there, too?"

He opened his blue eyes, taken aback by the cool clearness of her voice.

"Well, I can't abide the parson—if you want to know. Shall I put up your pony?"

"But perhaps you've not had your sleep out?" said Laura, politely interrogative.

He reddened, and came forward with a slow and rather shambling gait.

"I don't know what else there is to do up here of a Sunday morning," he said, with a boyish sulkiness, as he began to lead the pony towards the stables opposite. "Besides, I was up half the night seeing to one of the cows."

"You don't seem to have many neighbours," said Laura, as she walked beside him.

"There's rooks and crows" (which he pronounced broadly—"craws")—"not much else, I can tell you. Shall I take the pony out?"

"Please. I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me for hours!"

She looked at him merrily, and he returned the scrutiny. She wore the same thin black dress in which Helbeck had admired her the day before, and above it a cloth jacket and cap, trimmed with brown fur. Mason was dazzled a moment by the milky whiteness of the cheek above the fur, by the brightness of the eyes and hair; then was seized with fresh shyness, and became extremely busy with the pony.

"Mother'll be back in about an hour," he said gruffly.

"Goodness! what'll you do with me till then?"

They both laughed, he with an embarrassment that annoyed him. He was not at all accustomed to find himself at a disadvantage with a good-looking girl.

"There's a good fire in the house, anyway," he said; "you'll want to warm yourself, I should think, after driving up here."

"Oh! I'm not cold—I say, what jolly horses!"

For Mason had thrown open the large worm-eaten door of the stables, and inside could be seen the heads and backs of two cart-horses, huge, majestic creatures, who were peering over the doors of their stalls, as though they had been listening to the conversation.

Their owner glanced at them indifferently.

"Aye, they're not bad. We bred 'em three years ago, and they've taken more'n one prize already. I dare say old Daffady, now, as looks after them, would be sorry to part with them."

"I dare say he would. But why should he part with them?"

The young man hesitated. He was shaking down a load of hay for the pony, and Laura was leaning against the door of the stall watching his performance.

"Well, I reckon we shan't be farmin here all our lives," he said at last with some abruptness.

"Don't you like it then?"

"I'd get quit on it to-morrow if I could!"

His quick reply had an emphasis that astonished her.

"And your mother?"

"Oh! of course it's mother keeps me at it," he said, relapsing into the same accent of a sulky child that he had used once before.

Then he led his new cousin back to the farmhouse. By this time he was beginning to find his tongue and use his eyes. Laura was conscious that she was being closely observed, and that by a man who was by no means indifferent to women. She said to herself that she would try to keep him shy.

As they entered the farmhouse kitchen Mason hastened to pick up the chairs he had overturned in his sudden waking.

"I say, mother would be mad if she knew you'd come into this scrow!" he said with vexation, kicking aside some sporting papers that were littered over the floors, and bringing forward a carved oak chair with a cushion to place it before the fire for her acceptance.

"Scrow? What's that?" said Laura, lifting her eyebrows. "Oh, please don't tidy any more. I really think you make it worse. Besides, it's all right. What a dear old kitchen!"

She had seated herself in the cushioned chair, and was warming a slender foot at the fire. Mason wished she would take off her hat—it hid her hair. But he could not flatter himself that she was in the least occupied with what he wished. Her attention was all given to her surroundings—to the old raftered room, with its glowing fire and deep-set windows.

Bright as the April sun was outside, it hardly penetrated here. Through the mellow dusk, as through the varnish of an old picture, one saw the different objects in a golden light and shade—the brass warming-pan hanging beside the tall eight-day clock—the table in front of the long window-seat, covered with its checked red cloth—the carved door of a cupboard in the wall bearing the date 1679—the miscellaneous store of things packed away under the black rafters, dried herbs and tools, bundles of list and twine, the spindles of old spinning wheels, cattle-medicines, and the like—the heavy oaken chairs—the settle beside the fire, with its hard cushions and scrolled back. It was a room for winter, fashioned by the needs of winter. By the help of that great peat fire, built up year by year from the spoils of the moss a thousand feet below, generations of human beings had fought with snow and storm, had maintained their little polity there on the heights, self-centred, self-supplied. Across the yard, commanded by the window of the farm-kitchen, lay the rude byres where the cattle were prisoned from October to April. The cattle made the wealth of the farm, and there must be many weeks when the animals and their masters were shut in together from the world outside by wastes of snow.

Laura shut her eyes an instant, imagining the goings to and fro—the rising on winter dawns to feed the stock; the shepherd on the fell-side, wrestling with sleet and tempest; the returns at night to food and fire. Her young fancy, already played on by the breath of the mountains, warmed to the farmhouse and its primitive life. Here surely was something more human—more poetic even—than the tattered splendour of Bannisdale.

She opened her eyes wide again, as though in defiance, and saw Hubert Mason looking at her.

Instinctively she sat up straight, and drew her foot primly under the shelter of her dress.

"I was thinking of what it must be in winter," she said hurriedly. "I know I should like it."

"What, this place?" He gave a rough laugh. "I don't see what for, then. It's bad enough in summer. In winter it's fit to make you cut your throat. I say, where are you staying?"

"Why, at Bannisdale!" said Laura in surprise. "You knew my stepmother was still living, didn't you?"

"Well, I didn't think aught about it," he said, falling into candour, because the beauty of her grey eyes, now that they were fixed fair and full upon him, startled him out of his presence of mind.

"I wrote to you—to Cousin Elizabeth—when my father died," she said simply, rather proudly, and the eyes were removed from him.

"Aye—of course you did," he said in haste. "But mother's never yan to talk aboot letters. And you haven't dropped us a line since, have you?" he added, almost with timidity.

"No. I thought I'd surprise you. We've been a fortnight at Bannisdale."

His face flushed and darkened.

"Then you've been a fortnight in a queer place!" he said with a sudden, almost a violent change of tone. "I wonder you can bide so long under that man's roof!"

She stared.

"Do you mean because he disliked my father?"

"Oh, I don't know nowt about that!" He paused. His young face was crimson, his eyes angry and sinister. "He's a snake—is Helbeck!" he said slowly, striking his hands together as they hung over his knees.

Laura recoiled—instinctively straightening herself.

"Mr. Helbeck is quite kind to me," she said sharply. "I don't know why you speak of him like that. I'm staying there till my stepmother gets strong."

He stared at her, still red and obstinate.

"Helbeck an his house together stick in folk's gizzards aboot here," he said. "Yo'll soon find that oot. And good reason too. Did you ever hear of Teddy Williams?"

"Williams?" she said, frowning. "Was that the man that painted the chapel?"

Mason laughed and slapped his knee.

"Man, indeed? He was just a lad—down at Marsland School. I was there myself, you understand, the year after him. He was an awful clever lad—beat every one at books—an he could draw anything. You couldn't mak' much oot of his drawins, I daur say—they were queer sorts o' things. I never could make head or tail on 'em myself. But old Jackson, our master, thowt a lot of 'em, and so did the passon down at Marsland. An his father an mother—well, they thowt he was going to make all their fortunes for 'em. There was a scholarship—or soomthin o' that sort—an he was to get it an go to college, an make 'em all rich. They were just common wheelwrights, you understand, down on t' Whinthorpe Road. But my word, Mr. Helbeck spoilt their game for 'em!"

He lifted another sod of turf from the basket and flung it on the fire. The animus of his tone and manner struck Laura oddly. But she was at least as curious to hear as he was anxious to tell. She drew her chair a little nearer to him.

"What did Mr. Helbeck do?"

Mason laughed.

"Well, he just made a Papist of Teddy—took him an done him—brown. He got hold on him in the park one evening—Teddy was drawing a picture of the bridge, you understand—'ticed him up to his place soomhow—an Teddy was set to a job of paintin up at the chapel before you could say Jack Robinson. An in six months they'd settled it between 'em. Teddy wouldn't go to school no more. And one night he and his father had words; the owd man gie'd him a thrashing, and Teddy just cut and run. Next thing they heard he was at a Papist school, somewhere over Lancashire way, an he sent word to his mother—she was dyin then, you understan'—and she's dead since—that he'd gone to be a priest, an if they didn't like it, they might just do the other thing!"

"And the mother died?" said Laura.

"Aye—double quick! My mother went down to nurse her. An they sent Teddy back, just too late to see her. He come in two-three hours after they'd screwed her down. An his father chivvyed him oot—they wouldn't have him at the funeral. But folks were a deal madder with Mr. Helbeck, you understan', nor with Teddy. Teddy's father and brothers are chapel folk—Primitive Methodists they call 'em. They've got a big chapel in Whinthorpe—an they raised the whole place on Mr. Helbeck, and one night, coming out of Whinthorpe, he was set on by a lot of fellows, chapel fellows, a bit fresh, you understan'. Father was there—he never denied it—not he! Helbeck just got into the old mill by the bridge in time, but they'd marked his face for him all the same."

"Ah!" said Laura, staring into the fire. She had just remembered a dark scar on Mr. Helbeck's forehead, under the strong ripples of black hair. "Go on—do!"

"Oh! afterwards there was a lot of men bound over—father among 'em. There was a priest with Mr. Helbeck who got it hot too—that old chap Bowles—I dare say you've seen him. Aye, he's a snake, is Helbeck!" the young man repeated. Then he reddened still more deeply, and added with vindictive emphasis—"and an interfering,—hypocritical,—canting sort of party into t' bargain. He'd like to lord it over everybody aboot here, if he was let. But he's as poor as a church rat—who minds him?"

The language was extraordinary—so was the tone. Laura had been gazing at the speaker in a growing amazement.

"Thank you!" she said impetuously, when Mason stopped. "Thank you!—but, in spite of your story, I don't think you ought to speak like that of the gentleman I am staying with!"

Mason threw himself back in his chair. He was evidently trying to control himself.

"I didn't mean no offence," he said at last, with a return of the sulky voice. "Of course I understand that you're staying with the quality, and not with the likes of us."

Laura's face lit up with laughter. "What an extraordinary silly thing to say! But I don't mind—I'll forgive you—like I did years ago, when you pushed me into the puddle!"

"I pushed you into a puddle? But—I never did owt o' t' sort!" cried Mason, in a slow crescendo of astonishment.

"Oh, yes, you did," she nodded her little head. "I broke an egg, and you bullied me. Of course I thought you were a horrid boy—and I loved Polly, who cleaned my shoes and put me straight. Where's Polly, is she at church?"

"Aye—I dare say," said Mason stupidly, watching his visitor meanwhile with all his eyes. She had just put up a small hand and taken off her cap. Now, mechanically, she began to pat and arrange the little curls upon her forehead, then to take out and replace a hairpin or two, so as to fasten the golden mass behind a little more securely. The white fingers moved with an exquisite sureness and daintiness, the lifted arms showed all the young curves of the girl's form.

Suddenly Laura turned to him again. Her eyes had been staring dreamily into the fire, while her hands had been busy with her hair.

"So you don't remember our visit at all? You don't remember papa?"

He shook his head.

"Ah! well"—she sighed. Mason felt unaccountably guilty.

"I was always terr'ble bad at remembering," he said hastily.

"But you ought to have remembered papa." Then, in quite a different voice, "Is this your sitting-room"—she looked round it—"or—or your kitchen?"

The last words fell rather timidly, lest she might have hurt his feelings.

Mason jumped up.

"Why, yon's the parlour," he said. "I should ha' taken you there fust thing. Will you coom? I'll soon make a fire."

And walking across the kitchen, he threw open a further door ceremoniously. Laura followed, pausing just inside the threshold to look round the little musty sitting-room, with its framed photographs, its woollen mats, its rocking-chairs, and its square of mustard-coloured carpet. Mason watched her furtively all the time, to see how the place struck her.

"Oh, this isn't as nice as the kitchen," she said decidedly. "What's that?" She pointed to a pewter cup standing stately and alone upon the largest possible wool mat in the centre of a table.

Mason threw back his head and chuckled. His great chest seemed to fill out; all his sulky constraint dropped away.

"Of course you don't know anythin aboot these parts," he said to her with condescension. "You don't know as I came near bein champion for the County lasst year—no, I'll reckon you don't. Oh! that cup's nowt—that's nobbut Whinthorpe sports, lasst December. Maybe there'll be a better there, by-and-by."

The young giant grinned, as he took up the cup and pointed with assumed indifference to its inscription.

"What—football?" said Laura, putting up her hand to hide a yawn. "Oh! I don't care about football. But I love cricket. Why—you've got a piano—and a new one!"

Mason's face cleared again—in quite another fashion.

"Do you know the maker?" he said eagerly. "I believe he's thowt a deal of by them as knows. I bought it myself out o' the sheep. The lambs had done fust-rate,—an I'd had more'n half the trooble of 'em, ony ways. So I took no heed o' mother. I went down straight to Whinthrupp, an paid the first instalment an browt it up in the cart mesel'. Mr. Castle—do yo knaw 'im?—he's the organist at the parish church—he came with me to choose it."

"And is it you that play it," said Laura wondering, "or your sister?"

He looked at her in silence for a moment—and she at him. His aspect seemed to change under her eyes. The handsome points of the face came out; its coarseness and loutishness receded. And his manner became suddenly quiet and manly—though full of an almost tremulous eagerness.

"You like it?" she asked him.

"What—music? I should think so."

"Oh! I forgot—you're all musical in these northern parts, aren't you?"

He made no answer, but sat down to the piano and opened it. She leant over the back of a chair, watching him, half incredulous, half amused.

"I say—did you ever hear this? I believe it was some Cambridge fellow made it—Castle said so. He played it to me. And I can't get further than just a bit of it."

He raised his great hands and brought them down in a burst of chords that shook the little room and the raftered ceiling. Laura stared. He played on—played like a musician, though with occasional stumbling—played with a mingled energy and delicacy, an understanding and abandonment that amazed her—then grew crimson with the effort to remember—wavered—and stopped.

"Goodness!"—cried Laura. "Why, that's Stanford's music to the Eumenides! How on earth did you hear that? Go away. I can play it."

She pushed him away and sat down. He hung over her, his face smiling and transformed, while her little hands struggled with the chords, found the after melody, pursued it,—with pauses now and then, in which he would strike in, prompting her, putting his hand down with hers—and finally, after modulations which she made her way through, with laughter and head-shakings, she fell into a weird dance, to which he beat time with hands and limbs, urging her with a rain of comments.

"Oh! my goody—isn't that rousing? Play that again—just that change—just once! Oh! Lord—isn't that good, that chord—and that bit afterwards, what a bass!—I say, isn't it a bass? Don't you like it—don't you like it awfully?"

Suddenly she wheeled round from the piano, and sat fronting him, her hands on her knees. He fell back into a chair.

"I say"—he said slowly—"you are a grand 'un! If I'd only known you could play like that!"

Her laugh died away. To his amazement she began to frown.

"I haven't played—ten notes—since papa died. He liked it so."

She, turned her back to him, and began to look at the torn music at the top of the piano.

"But you will play—you'll play to me again"—he said beseechingly.—"Why, it would be a sin if you didn't play! Wouldn't I play if I could play like you! I never had more than a lesson, now and again, from old Castle. I used to steal mother's eggs to pay him—I can play any thing I hear—and I've made a song—old Castle's writing it down—he says he'll teach me to do it some day. But of course I'm no good for playing—I never shall be any good. Look at those fingers—they're like bits of stick—beastly things!"

He thrust them out indignantly for her inspection. Laura looked at them with a professional air.

"I don't call it a bad hand. I expect you've no patience."

"Haven't I! I tell you I'd play all day, if it'ld do any good—but it won't."

"And how about the poor farm?" said Laura, with a lifted brow.

"Oh! the farm—the farm—dang the farm!"—said Mason violently, slapping his knee.

Suddenly there was a sound of voices outside, a clattering on the stones of the farmyard.

Mason sprang up, all frowns.

"That's mother. Here, let's shut the piano—quick! She can't abide it."



CHAPTER V

Mason went out to meet his mother, and Laura waited. She stood where she had risen, beside the piano, looking nervously towards the door. Childish remembrances and alarms seemed to be thronging back into her mind.

There was a noise of voices in the outer room. Then a handle was roughly turned, and Laura saw before her a short, stout woman, with grey hair, and the most piercing black eyes. Intimidated by the eyes, and by the sudden pause of the newcomer on the threshold, Miss Fountain could only look at her interrogatively.

"Is it Cousin Elizabeth?" she said, holding out a wavering hand.

Mrs. Mason scarcely allowed her own to be touched.

"We're not used to visitors i' church-time," she said abruptly, in a deep funereal voice. "Mappen you'll sit down."

And still holding the girl with her eyes, she walked across to an old rocking-chair, let herself fall into it, and with a loud sigh loosened her bonnet strings.

Laura, in her amazement, had to strangle a violent inclination to laugh. Then she flushed brightly, and sat down on the wooden stool in front of the piano. Mrs. Mason, still staring at her, seemed to wait for her to speak. But Laura would say nothing.

"Soa—thoo art Stephen Fountain's dowter—art tha?"

"Yes—and you have seen me before," was the girl's quiet reply.

She said to herself that her cousin had the eyes of a bird of prey. So black and fierce they were, in the greyish white face under the shaggy hair. But she was not afraid. Rather she felt her own temper rising.

"How long is't sen your feyther deed?"

"Nine months. But you knew that, I think—because I wrote it you."

Mrs. Mason's heavy lids blinked a moment, then she said with slowly quickening emphasis, like one mounting to a crisis:

"Wat art tha doin' wi' Bannisdale Hall? What call has thy feyther's dowter to be visitin onder Alan Helbeck's roof?"

Laura's open mouth showed first wonderment, then laughter.

"Oh! I see," she said impatiently—"you don't seem to understand. But of course you remember that my father married Miss Helbeck for his second wife?"

"Aye, an she cam oot fra amang them," exclaimed Mrs. Mason; "she put away from her the accursed thing!"

The massive face was all aglow, transformed, with a kind of sombre fire. Laura stared afresh.

"She gave up being a Catholic, if that's what you mean," she said after a moment's pause. "But she couldn't keep to it. When papa fell ill, and she was unhappy, she went back. And then of course she made it up with her brother."

The triumph in Mrs. Mason's face yielded first to astonishment, then to anger.

"The poor weak doited thing," she said at last in a tone of indescribable contempt, "the poor silly fule! But naebody need ha' luked for onything betther from a Helbeck.—And I daur say"—she lifted her voice fiercely—"I daur say she took yo' wi' her, an it's along o' thattens as yo're coom to spy on us oop here?"

Laura sprang up.

"Me!" she said indignantly. "You think I'm a Catholic and a spy? How kind of you! But of course you don't know anything about my father, nor how he brought me up. As for my poor little stepmother, I came here with her to get her well, and I shall stay with her till she is well. I really don't know why you talk to me like this. I suppose you have cause to dislike Mr. Helbeck, but it is very odd that you should visit it on me, papa's daughter, when I come to see you!"

The girl's voice trembled, but she threw back her slender neck with a gesture that became her. The door, which had been closed, stealthily opened. Hubert Mason's face appeared in the doorway. It was gazing eagerly—admiringly—at Miss Fountain.

Mrs. Mason did not see him. Nor was she daunted by Laura's anger.

"It's aw yan," she said stubbornly. "Thoo ha' made a covenant wi' the Amorite an the Amalekite. They ha' called tha, an thoo art eatin o' their sacrifices!"

There was an uneasy laugh from the door, and Laura, turning her astonished eyes in that direction, perceived Hubert standing in the doorway, and behind him another head thrust eagerly forward—the head of a young woman in a much betrimmed Sunday hat.

"I say, mother, let her be, wil tha?" said a hearty voice; and, pushing Hubert aside, the owner of the hat entered the room. She went up to Laura, and gave her a loud kiss.

"I'm Polly—Polly Mason. An I know who you are weel enough. Doan't you pay ony attention to mother. That's her way. Hubert an I take it very kind of you to come and see us."

"Mother's rats on Amorites!" said Hubert, grinning.

"Rats?—Amorites?"—said Laura, looking piteously at Polly, whose hand she held.

Polly laughed, a bouncing, good-humoured laugh. She herself was a bouncing, good-humoured person, the apparent antithesis of her mother with her lively eyes, her frizzled hair, her high cheek-bones touched with a bright pink.

"Yo'll have to get oop early to understan' them two," she declared. "Mother's allus talkin out o' t' Bible, an Hubert picks up a lot o' low words out o' Whinthrupp streets—an there 'tis. But now look here—yo'll stay an tak' a bit o' dinner with us?"

"I don't want to be in your way," said Laura formally. Really, she had some difficulty to control the quiver of her lips, though it would have been difficult to say whether laughter or tears came nearest.

At this Polly broke out in voluble protestations, investigating her cousin's dress all the time, fingering her little watch-chain, and even taking up a corner of the pretty cloth jacket that she might examine the quality of it. Laura, however, looked at Mrs. Mason.

"If Cousin Elizabeth wishes me to stay," she said proudly.

Polly burst into another loud laugh.

"Yo see, it goes agen mother to be shakin hands wi' yan that's livin wi' Papists—and Misther Helbeck by the bargain. So wheniver mother talks aboot Amorites or Jesubites, or any o' thattens, she nobbut means Papist—Romanists as our minister coes 'em. He's every bit as bad as her. He would as lief shake hands wi' Mr. Helbeck as wi' the owd 'un!"

"I'll uphowd ye—Mr. Bayley hasn't preached a sermon this ten year wi'oot chivvyin Papists!" said Hubert from the door. "An yo'll not find yan o' them in his parish if yo were to hunt it wi' a lantern for a week o' Sundays. When I was a lad I thowt Romanists were a soart o' varmin. I awmost looked to see 'em nailed to t' barndoor, same as stoeats!"

"But how strange!" cried Laura—"when there are so few Catholics about here. And no one hates Catholics now. One may just—despise them."

She looked from mother to son in bewilderment. Not only Hubert's speech, but his whole manner had broadened and coarsened since his mother's arrival.

"Well, if there isn't mony, they make a deal o' talk," said Polly—"onyways sence Mr. Helbeck came to t' hall.—Mother, I'll take Miss Fountain oopstairs, to get her hat off."

During all the banter of her son and daughter Mrs. Mason had sat in a disdainful silence, turning her strange eyes—the eyes of a fanatic, in a singularly shrewd and capable face—now on Laura, now on her children. Laura looked at her again, irresolute whether to go or stay. Then an impulse seized her which astonished herself. For it was an impulse of liking, an impulse of kinship; and as she quickly crossed the room to Mrs. Mason's side, she said in a pretty pleading voice:

"But you see, Cousin Elizabeth, I'm not a Catholic—and papa wasn't a Catholic. And I couldn't help Mrs. Fountain going back to her old religion—you shouldn't visit it on me!"

Mrs. Mason looked up.

"Why art tha not at church on t' Lord's day?"

The question came stern and quick.

Laura wavered, then drew herself up.

"Because I'm not your sort either. I don't believe in your church, or your ministers. Father didn't, and I'm like him."

Her voice had grown thick, and she was quite pale. The old woman stared at her.

"Then yo're nobbut yan o' the heathen!" she said with slow precision.

"I dare say!" cried Laura, half laughing, half crying. "That's my affair. But I declare I think I hate Catholics as much as you—there, Cousin Elizabeth! I don't hate my stepmother, of course. I promised father to take care of her. But that's another matter."

"Dost tha hate Alan Helbeck?" said Mrs. Mason suddenly, her black eyes opening in a flash.

The girl hesitated, caught her breath—then was seized with the strangest, most abject desire to propitiate this grim woman with the passionate look.

"Yes!" she said wildly. "No, no!—that's silly. I haven't had time to hate him. But I don't like him, anyway. I'm nearly sure I shall hate him!"

There was no mistaking the truth in her tone.

Mrs. Mason slowly rose. Her chest heaved with one long breath, then subsided; her brow tightened. She turned to her son.

"Art tha goin to let Daffady do all thy work for tha?" she said sharply. "Has t' roan calf bin looked to?"

"Aye—I'm going," said Hubert evasively, and sheepishly straightening himself he made for the front door, throwing back more than one look as he departed at his new cousin.

"And you really want me to stay?" repeated Laura insistently, addressing Mrs. Mason.

"Yo're welcome," was the stiff reply. "Nobbut yo'd been mair welcome if yo hadna brokken t' Sabbath to coom here. Mappen yo'll goa wi' Polly, an tak' your bonnet off."

Laura hesitated a moment longer, bit her lip, and went.

* * * * *

Polly Mason was a great talker. In the few minutes she spent with Laura upstairs, before she hurried down again to help her mother with the Sunday dinner, she asked her new cousin innumerable questions, showing an intense curiosity as to Bannisdale and the Helbecks, a burning desire to know whether Laura had any money of her own, or was still dependent upon her stepmother, and a joyous appropriative pride in Miss Fountain's gentility and good looks.

The frankness of Polly's flatteries, and the exuberance of her whole personality, ended by producing a certain stiffness in Laura. Every now and then, in the intervals of Polly's questions, when she ceased to be inquisitive and became confidential, Laura would wonder to herself. She would half shut her eyes, trying to recall the mental image of her cousins and of the farm, with which she had started that morning from Bannisdale; or she would think of her father, his modes of life and speech—was he really connected, and how, with this place and its inmates? She had expected something simple and patriarchal. She had found a family of peasants, living in a struggling, penurious way—a grim mother speaking broad dialect, a son with no pretensions to refinement or education, except perhaps through his music—and a daughter——

Laura turned an attentive eye on Polly, on her high and red cheek-bones, the extravagant fringe that vulgarised all her honest face, the Sunday dress of stone-coloured alpaca, profusely trimmed with magenta ribbons.

"I will—I will like her!" she said to herself—"I am a horrid, snobbish, fastidious little wretch."

But her spirits had sunk. When Polly left her she leant for a moment upon the sill of the open window, and looked out. Across the dirty, uneven yard, where the manure lay in heaps outside the byre doors, she saw the rude farm buildings huddled against each other in a mean, unsightly group. Down below, from the house porch apparently, a cracked bell began to ring, and from some doors opposite three labourers, the "hired men," who lived and boarded on the farm, came out. The first two were elderly men, gnarled and bent like tough trees that have fought the winter; the third was a youth. They were tidily dressed in Sunday clothes, for their work was done, and they were ready for the afternoon's holiday.

They walked across to the farmhouse in silence, one behind the other. Not even the young fellow raised his eyes to the window and the girl framed within it. Behind them came a gust of piercing easterly wind. A cloud had covered the sun. The squalid farmyard, the bare fell-side beyond it, the distant levels of the marsh, had taken to themselves a cold forbidding air. Laura again imagined it in December—a waste of snow, with the farm making an ugly spot upon the white, and the little black-bearded sheep she could see feeding on the fell, crowding under the rocks for shelter. But this time she shivered. All the spell was broken. To live up here with this madwoman, this strange youth—and Polly! Yet it seemed to her that something drew her to Cousin Elizabeth—if she were not so mad. How strange to find this abhorrence of Mr. Helbeck among these people—so different, so remote! She remembered her own words—"I am sure I shall hate him!"—not without a stab of conscience. What had she been doing—perhaps—but adding her own injustice to theirs?

She stood lost in a young puzzle and heat of feeling—half angry, half repentant.

But only for a second. Then certain phrases of Augustina's rang through her mind—she saw herself standing in the corner of the chapel while the others prayed. Every pulse tightened—her whole nature leapt again in defiance. She seemed to be holding something at bay—a tyrannous power that threatened humiliation and hypocrisy, that seemed at the same time to be prying into secret things—things it should never, never know—and never rule! Yes, she did understand Cousin Elizabeth—she did!

* * * * *

The dinner went sadly. The viands were heavy: so were the faces of the labourers, and the air of the low-raftered kitchen, heated as it was by a huge fire, and pervaded by the smell from the farmyard. Laura felt it all very strange, the presence of the farm servants at the same table with the Masons and herself—the long silences that no one made an effort to break—the relations between Hubert and his mother.

As for the labourers, Mason addressed them now and then in a bullying voice, and they spoke to him as little as they could. It seemed to Laura that there was an alliance between them and the mother against a lazy and incompetent master; and that the lad's vanity was perpetually alive to it. Again and again he would pull himself together, attempt the gentleman, and devote himself to his young lady guest. But in the midst of their conversation he would hear something at the other end of the table, and suddenly there would come a burst of fierce unintelligible speech between him and the mistress of the house, while the labourers sat silent and sly, and Polly's loud laugh would break in, trying to make peace.

Laura's cool grey eyes followed the youth with a constant critical wonder. In any other circumstances she would not have thought him worth an instant's attention. She had all the supercilious impatience of the pretty girl accustomed to choose her company. But this odd fact of kinship held and harassed her. She wanted to understand these Masons—her father's folk.

"Now he is really talking quite nicely," she said to herself on one occasion, when Hubert had found in the gifts and accomplishments of his friend Castle, the organist, a subject that untied his tongue and made him almost agreeable. Suddenly a question caught his ear.

"Daffady, did tha turn the coo?" said his mother in a loud voice. Even in the homeliest question it had the same penetrating, passionate quality that belonged to her gaze—to her whole personality indeed.

Hubert dropped his phrase—and his knife and fork—and stared angrily at Daffady, the old cowman and carter.

Daffady threw his master a furtive look, then munched through a mouthful of bread and cheese without replying.

He was a grey and taciturn person, with a provocative look of patience.

"What tha bin doin wi' th' coo?" said Hubert sharply. "I left her mysel nobbut half an hour sen."

Daffady turned his head again in Hubert's direction for a moment, then deliberately addressed the mistress.

"Aye, aye, missus"—he spoke in a high small voice—"A turned her reet enoof, an a gied her soom fresh straa for her yed. She doin varra middlin."

"If she'd been turned yesterday in a proper fashion, she'd ha' bin on her feet by now," said Mrs. Mason, with a glance at her son.

"Nowt o' t' soart, mother," cried Hubert. He leant forward, flushed with wrath, or beer—his potations had begun to fill Laura with dismay—and spoke with a hectoring violence. "I tell tha when t' farrier cam oop last night, he said she'd been managed first-rate! If yo and Daffady had yor way wi' yor fallals an yor nonsense, yo'd never leave a poor sick creetur alone for five minutes; I towd Daffady to let her be, an I'll let him knaa who's measter here!"

He glared at the carter, quite regardless of Laura's presence. Polly coughed loudly, and tried to make a diversion by getting up to clear away the plates. The three combatants took no notice.

Daffady slowly ran his tongue round his lips; then he said, again looking at the mistress:

"If a hadna turned her I dew believe she'd ha' gien oos t' slip—she was terr'ble swollen as 'twos."

"I tell tha to let her be!" thundered Hubert. "If she deas, that's ma consarn; I'll ha' noa meddlin wi' my orders—dost tha hear?"

"Aye, it wor thirrty poond thraan awa lasst month, an it'll be thirrty poond this," said his mother slowly; "thoo art fine at shoutin. Bit thy fadther had need ha' addlet his brass—to gie thee summat to thraw oot o' winder."

Hubert rose from the table with an oath, stood for an instant looking down at Laura,—glowering, and pulling fiercely at his moustache,—then, noisily opening the front door, he strode across the yard to the byres.

There was an instant's silence. Then Mrs. Mason rose with her hands clasped before her, her eyes half closed.

"For what we ha' received, the Lord mak' us truly thankful," she said in a loud, nasal voice. "Amen."

* * * * *

After dinner, Laura put on an apron of Polly's, and helped her cousin to clear away. Mrs. Mason had gruffly bade her sit still, but when the girl persisted, she herself—flushed with dinner and combat—took her seat on the settle, opposite to old Daffady, and deliberately made holiday, watching Stephen's daughter all the time from the black eyes that roved and shone so strangely under the shaggy brows and the white hair.

The old cowman sat hunched over the fire, smoking his pipe for a time in beatific silence.

But presently Laura, as she went to and fro, caught snatches of conversation.

"Did tha go ta Laysgill last Sunday?" said Mrs. Mason abruptly.

Daffady removed his pipe.

"Aye, a went, an a preeched. It wor a varra stirrin meetin. Sum o' yor paid preests sud ha' bin theer. A gien it 'em strang. A tried ta hit 'em all—baith gert an lile."

There was a pause, then he added placidly:

"A likely suden't suit them varra weel. Theer was a mon beside me, as pooed me down afoor a'd hofe doon."

"Tha sudna taak o' 'paid preests,' Daffady," said Mrs. Mason severely. "Tha doosna understand nowt o' thattens."

Daffady glanced slyly at his mistress—at the "Church-pride" implied in the attitude of her capacious form, in the shining of the Sunday alpaca and black silk apron.

"Mebbe not," he said mildly, "mebbe not." And he resumed his pipe.

On another occasion, as Laura went flitting across the kitchen, drawing to herself the looks of both its inmates, she heard what seemed to be a fragment of talk about a funeral.

"Aye, poor Jenny!" said Mrs. Mason. "They didna mak' mich account on her whan t' breath wor yanst oot on her."

"Nay,"—Daffady shook his head for sympathy,—"it wor a varra poor set-oot, wor Jenny's buryin. Nowt but tay, an sic-like."

Mrs. Mason raised two gaunt hands and let them drop again on her knee.

"I shud ha' thowt they'd ha' bin ashamed," she said. "Jenny's brass ull do 'em noa gude. She wor a fule to leave it to 'un."

Daffady withdrew his pipe again. His lantern-jawed face, furrowed with slow thought, hung over the blaze.

"Aye," he said, "aye. Wal, I've buried three childer—an I'm nobbut a labrin mon—but a thank the Lord I ha buried them aw—wi' ham."

The last words came out with solemnity. Laura, at the other end of the kitchen, turned open-mouthed to look at the pair. Not a feature moved in either face. She sped back into the dairy, and Polly looked up in astonishment.

"What ails tha?" she said.

"Oh, nothing!" said Laura, dashing the merry tears from her eyes. She proceeded to roll up her sleeves, and plunge her hands and arms into the bowl of warm water that Polly had set before her. Meanwhile, Polly, very big and square, much reddened also by the fuss of household work, stood just behind her cousin's shoulder, looking down, half in envy, half in admiration, at the slimness of the white wrists and pretty fingers.

A little later the two girls, all traces of their housework removed, came back into the kitchen. Daffady and Mrs. Mason had disappeared.

"Where is Cousin Elizabeth?" said Laura rather sharply, as she looked round her.

Polly explained that her mother was probably shut up in her bedroom reading her Bible. That was her custom on a Sunday afternoon.

"Why, I haven't spoken to her at all!" cried Laura. Her cheek had flushed.

Polly showed embarrassment.

"Next time yo coom, mother'll tak' mair noatice. She was takkin stock o' you t' whole time, I'll uphowd yo."

"That isn't what I wanted," said Laura.

She walked to the window and leaned her head against the frame. Polly watched her with compunction, seeing quite plainly the sudden drop of the lip. All she could do was to propose to show her cousin the house.

Laura languidly consented.

So they wandered again through the dark stone-slabbed dairy, with its milk pans on the one side and its bacon-curing troughs on the other; and into the little stuffy bedrooms upstairs, each with its small oak four-poster and patchwork counterpane. They looked at the home-made quilt of goosedown—Polly's handiwork—that lay on Hubert's bed; at the clusters of faded photographs and coloured prints that hung on the old uneven walls; at the vast meal-ark in Polly's room that held the family store of meal and oatcake for the year.

"When we wor little 'uns, fadther used to give me an Hubert a silver saxpence the day he browt home t' fresh melder fro' t' mill," said Polly; "theer was parlish little nobbut paritch and oatcake to eat when we wor small. An now I'll uphold yo there isn't a farm servant but wants his white bread yanst a day whativver happens."

The house was neat and clean, but there were few comforts in it, and no luxuries. It showed, too, a number of small dilapidations that a very little money and care would soon have set to rights. Polly pointed to them sadly. There was no money, and Hubert didn't trouble himself. "Fadther was allus workin. He'd be up at half-past four this time o' year, an he didna go to bed soa early noather. But Hubert'ull do nowt he can help. Yo can hardly get him to tak' t' peaets i' ter Whinthorpe when t' peaet-cote's brastin wi' 'em. An as fer doin a job o' cartin fer t' neebors, t' horses may be eatin their heads off, Hubert woan't stir hissel'. 'Let 'em lead their aan muck for theirsels'—that's what he'll say. Iver sen fadther deed it's bin janglin atwixt mother an Hubert. It makes her mad to see iverything goin downhill. An he's that masterful he woan't be towd. Yo saw how he went on wi' Daffady at dinner. But if it weren't for Daffady an us, there'd be no stock left."

And poor Polly, sitting on the edge of the meal-ark and dangling her large feet, went into a number of plaintive details, that were mostly unintelligible, sometimes repulsive, in Laura's ears.

It seemed that Hubert was always threatening to leave the farm. "Give me a bit of money, and you'll soon be quit of me. I'll go to Froswick, and make my fortune"—that was what he'd say to his mother. But who was going to give him money to throw about? And he couldn't sell the farm while Mrs. Mason lived, by the father's will.

As to her mother, Polly admitted that she was "gey ill to live wi'." There was no one like her for "addlin a bit here and addlin a bit there." She was the best maker and seller of butter in the country-side; but she had been queer about religion ever since an illness that attacked her as a young woman.

And now it was Mr. Bayley, the minister, who excited her, and made her worse. Polly, for her part, hated him. "My worrd, he do taak!" said she. And every Sunday he preached against Catholics, and the Pope, and such like. And as there were no Catholics anywhere near, but Mr. Helbeck at Bannisdale, and a certain number at Whinthorpe, people didn't know what to make of him. And they laughed at him, and left off going—except occasionally for curiosity, because he preached in a black gown, which, so Polly heard tell, was very uncommon nowadays. But mother would listen to him by the hour. And it was all along of Teddy Williams. It was that had set her mad.

Here, however, Polly broke off to ask an eager question. What had Mr. Helbeck said when Laura told him of her wish to go and see her cousins?

"I'll warrant he wasn't best pleased! Feyther couldn't abide him—because of Teddy. He didn't thraw no stones that neet i' Whinthrupp Lane—feyther was a strict man and read his Bible reg'lar—but he stood wi' t' lads an looked on—he didn't say owt to stop 'em. Mr. Helbeck called to him—he had a priest with him—'Mr. Mason!' he ses, 'this is an old man—speak to those fellows!' But feyther wouldn't. 'Let 'em trounce tha!' he ses—'aye, an him too! It'ull do tha noa harm.'—Well, an what did he say, Mr. Helbeck?—I'd like to know."

"Say? Nothing—except that it was a long way, and I might have the pony carriage."

Laura's tone was rather dry. She was sitting on the edge of Polly's bed, with her arm round one of its oaken posts. Her cheek was laid against the post, and her eyes had been wandering about a good deal while Polly talked. Till the mention of Helbeck. Then her attention came back. And during Polly's account of the incident in Whinthorpe Lane, she began to frown. What bigotry, after all! As to the story of young Williams—it was very perplexing—she would get the truth of it out of Augustina. But it was extraordinary that it should be so well known in this upland farm—that it should make a kind of link—a link of hatred—between Mr. Helbeck and the Masons. After her movement of wild sympathy with Mrs. Mason, she realised now, as Polly's chatter slipped on, that she understood her cousins almost as little as she did Helbeck.

Nay, more. The picture of Helbeck stoned and abused by these rough, uneducated folk had begun to rouse in her a curious sympathy. Unwillingly her mind invested him with a new dignity.

So that when Polly told a rambling story of how Mr. Bayley, after the street fight, had met Mr. Helbeck at a workhouse meeting and had placed his hands behind his back when Mr. Helbeck offered his own, Laura tossed her head.

"What a ridiculous man!" she said disdainfully; "what can it matter to Mr. Helbeck whether Mr. Bayley shakes hands with him or not?"

Polly looked at her in some astonishment, and dropped the subject. The elder woman, conscious of plainness and inferiority, was humbly anxious to please her new cousin. The girl's delicate and characteristic physique, her clear eyes and decided ways, and a certain look she had in conversation—half absent, half critical—which was inherited from her father,—all of them combined to intimidate the homely Polly, and she felt perhaps less at ease with her visitor as she saw more of her.

Presently they stood before some old photographs on Polly's mantelpiece; Polly looked timidly at her cousin.

"Doan't yo think as Hubert's verra handsome?" she said.

And taking up one of the portraits, she brushed it with her sleeve and handed it to Laura.

Laura held it up for scrutiny.

"No—o," she said coolly, "not really handsome."

Polly looked disappointed.

"There's not a mony gells aboot here as doan't coe Hubert handsome," she said with emphasis.

"It's Hubert's business to call the girls handsome," said Laura, laughing, and handing back the picture.

Polly grinned—then suddenly looked grave.

"I wish he'd leave t' gells alone!" she said with an accent of some energy, "he'll mappen get into trooble yan o' these days!"

"They don't keep him in his place, I suppose," said Laura, flushing, she hardly knew why. She got up and walked across the room to the window. What did she want to know about Hubert and "t' gells"? She hated vulgar and lazy young men!—though they might have a musical gift that, so to speak, did not belong to them.

Nevertheless she turned round again to ask, with some imperiousness,—

"Where is your brother?—what is he doing all this time?"

"Sittin alongside the coo, I dare say—lest Daffady should be gettin the credit of her," said Polly, laughing. "The poor creetur fell three days sen—summat like a stroke, t' farrier said,—an Hubert's bin that jealous o' Daffady iver sen. He's actually poo'ed hissel' oot o' bed mornins to luke after her!—Lord bless us—I mun goa an feed t' calves!"

And hastily throwing an apron over her Sunday gown, Polly clattered down the stairs in a whirlwind.

* * * * *

Laura followed her more leisurely, passed through the empty kitchen and opened the front door.

As she stood under the porch looking out, she put up a small hand to hide a yawn. When she set out that morning she had meant to spend the whole day at the farm. Now it was not yet tea-time, and she was more than ready to go. In truth her heart was hot, and rather bitter. Cousin Elizabeth, certainly, had treated her with a strange coolness. And as for Hubert—after that burst of friendship, beside the piano! She drew herself together sharply—she would go at once and ask him for her pony cart.

Lifting her skirt daintily, she picked her way across the dirty yard, and fumbled at a door opposite—the door whence she had seen old Daffady come out at dinner-time.

"Who's there?" shouted a threatening voice from within.

Laura succeeded in lifting the clumsy latch. Hubert Mason, from inside, saw a small golden head appear in the doorway.

"Would you kindly help me get the pony cart?" said the light, half-sarcastic voice of Miss Fountain. "I must be going, and Polly's feeding the calves."

Her eyes at first distinguished nothing but a row of dim animal forms, in crowded stalls under a low roof. Then she saw a cow lying on the ground, and Hubert Mason beside her, amid the wreaths of smoke that he was puffing from a clay pipe. The place was dark, close, and fetid. She withdrew her head hastily. There was a muttering and movement inside, and Mason came to the door, thrusting his pipe into his pocket.