the suggestion, and then in a second
he smiled. "Of course. When will you come?"

"On Sunday?" she ventured.

"It won't be working then."

"No. But other days you are busy."

Jeff dropped upon his knees again in front of her, and turned his
attention to brushing the worst of the mud from her skirt. He attacked
it with extreme vigour, his smooth lips firmly shut.

At the end of nearly a minute he paused. "I shan't be too busy for that
any day," he said.

"Not really?" Doris sounded a little doubtful.

He looked at her, and somehow his brown eyes made her lower her own.
They held a mastery, a confidence, that embarrassed her subtly and quite
inexplicably.

"Come any time," he said, "except market-day. Mrs. Grimshaw will always
know where I am to be found, and will send me word."

She nodded. "I shall come one morning then. I will ride round, shall I?"

He returned to his task, faintly smiling. "Don't take any five-barred
gates on your way!" he said.

"No, I shan't do that again," she promised. "Five-barred gates have
their drawbacks."

"As well as their advantages," said Jeff Ironside enigmatically.

CHAPTER IV

CORN

"Master Jeff!" The kitchen door opened with a nervous creak and a
wrinkled brown face, encircled by the frills of a muslin nightcap,
peered cautiously in. "Are you asleep, my dear?" asked Granny Grimshaw
with tender solicitude.

He was sitting at the table with his elbows upon it and his head in his
hands. She saw the smoke curling upwards from his pipe, and rightly
deduced from this that he was not asleep.

She came forward, candle in hand. "Master Jeff, you'll pardon me, I'm
sure. But it's getting so late--nigh upon twelve o'clock. You won't be
getting anything of a night's rest if you don't go to bed."

Jeff raised his head. His eyes, sombre with thought, met hers. "Is it
late?" he said abstractedly.

"And you such an early riser," said Granny Grimshaw.

She went across to the fire and began to rake it out, he watching her in
silence, still with that sombre look in his dark eyes.

Very suddenly Granny Grimshaw turned and, poker in hand, confronted
him. She was wearing a large Paisley shawl over her pink flannel
nightdress, but the figure she presented, though quaint, was not
unimposing.

"Master Jeff," she said, "don't you be too modest and retiring, my dear.
You're just as good as the best of 'em."

A slow, rather hard smile drew the corners of the man's mouth. "The