f calling, quite different from the howling of
mad folk, or the mocking laughter or ugly whine of Jeremy. Miss Orrin
poured out tea with a kind of grim _aplomb_. If I had been afraid that
she meant to poison us--or at least Elsie, I was soon undeceived. The
amount of tea that she poured down her own throat was astonishing in
the extreme. There were, however, certainly several sorts of cake that
she would not allow her master, Mr. Stennis, to touch, on pretext of
indigestion, but which she pressed upon us. And it was all that I
could do, by kicking her shins beneath the table, to keep Elsie from
accepting.

I managed it all right, though. They might have been as harmless as my
father's acid drops. But after all there was only one Elsie, and I was
not going to run any risks.

There was a distant sound of calling across the moat, and at the noise,
Mr. Stennis frowned, an ugly look coming over his face, while on the
contrary the sound had a still more extraordinary effect upon Miss
Orrin. Her eyes gleamed more softly, losing for a moment their
iron-gray expression. Her hands went up instinctively to the thin
little corkscrew curls which bobbed at either side of her face.

In ten seconds the fierce, angular old maid looked ten years younger.
Love, vanity, self-consciousness--ye are wondrous things.

"If it's that interfering curate from Over Breckonton, I'll throw him
into the moat! I'll have the dogs on him," growled Mr. Stennis,
"always poking his nose in when he is least wanted!"

Then he turned to his housekeeper, and detecting her busy fingers, he
said with a sneer--

"What, prinking again! I see. Only the beneficed clergy have any
chance with you, Miss Aphra!"

"Beneficed!" she cried. "Ah! poor lad, I wish he were! If I had my
will it would not all go to that lazy vicar, who never does a ha'pworth
of good, but rides to hounds and preaches his father's sermons, because
he cannot make one for himself."

"Ha!" cried the old man, "be off with you, young ones. Miss Orrin is
going to receive spiritual direction and absolution."

The tall old woman started up, her right hand upon the bread knife, as
if she could have killed her master with it on the spot.

"Well would it be for you, Hobby Stennis, if you did the like!" she
said, restraining herself with difficulty. "But there's Mr.
Ablethorpe, and he must not be kept waiting!"

"Of course not, Miss Orrin," said Mr. Stennis sneeringly. "It were a