russet surfaces, so
hot were they from the pan. He drank pure water. He refused to smoke,
which Mr. Ball did every day and all day long. Mr. Stennis was an
example--a man without vices.

Then these two, master and man--though by no means "like master, like
man"--strolled about the fields discussing what was to be done with
this parcel of bullocks, or what line of crops would do best on the
Nether Laggan Hill, or the Broomy Knowe. Mr. Bailiff Ball wished
heartily that his master would be gone. But he was not in a position
to tell him so. At last, after two o'clock, Mr. Stennis suddenly, and
without any preliminaries, bade him "good-day" and so betook himself
through the misty willow copses along the Backwater, on which the haze
of spring was greening already, towards the house of Deep Moat Grange.

* * * * *

It was not the least of Elsie's troubles to keep herself "nice" in the
back half of the monks' oven, near the bakehouse. Soap she had--a
whole bar of it. And with the water which she dipped up from the
trap-door behind her bed, she washed her single turn-over collar again
and again--as well as her handkerchiefs and other "white
things"--drying them rapidly and well in front of the dividing wall of
the oven.

Starch, however, was beyond her, and ironing also. Still she was
clean, which to Elsie Stennis was very near indeed to being godly.
Jeremy had been idle for several days, but it chanced that that very
Saturday morning he had set the furnace a-going, and had begun to
prepare a batch of bread. Notwithstanding, he had been strangely
unsettled. He had looked in several times on Elsie, even bringing in a
little washing soda for her laundry work, but had departed always
without saying anything of his intentions. Never on any occasion had
he mentioned her fellow-prisoner, my father. And he, on his part, had
strictly forbidden Elsie to say anything of their converse one with
another. Not that Elsie would have done that in any case. She had too
much the instinct of playing the game.

Usually when Jeremy came in, he would bring with him a Jew's-harp, and,
curling himself up in one corner of the settle, he would extract tunes
from that limited instrument with a strange weird combination of voice
and twang of the metallic tongue.

Or with a mandolin, of which he had somehow become possessed, he would
lean against the table, stretch his long legs, shake back his snaky
curls, s