rust you to be
accurate."

"Do you mean to tell me that you can look father in the face--"
But here Patty broke off, at the sound of hoofs on the gravel below.

"There will be no need," said Hetty quietly, "if, as I think, he is
mounting Bounce to ride home."

"Bounce? How did you know that Bounce brought us?"--for Bounce was
Mrs. Wesley's nag, and the Rector usually rode an old gray named
Mettle, but had taken of late to a filly of his own breeding.

"I ought to remember Bounce's shuffle," answered Hetty. "Nay, I
should have recognised it on the road two miles back if--if I hadn't
been--"

She came to a full stop, in some confusion. Nevertheless she was
right; and the girls arrived downstairs to learn from Mrs. Grantham
that their father had ridden off, declining her offer of supper and
scoffing at her fears of highwaymen.

And the days went by. Hetty could not help telling herself that
Patty was a disappointment. But she was saved from reflecting on it
overmuch: for Mrs. Grantham (after forty years of comfort without
one) had conceived a desire to be waited on and have her hair dressed
by a maid, and between Mrs. Grantham's inability to discover
precisely what she wanted done by Patty, and Patty's unhandiness in
doing it, and Mrs. Grantham's anxiety to fill up Patty's time, and
Patty's lack of inventiveness, the pair kept Hetty pretty constantly
near her wit's end.

Concerning her lover she attempted no more confidences. But, alone,
she pondered much on Patty's reproof, which set her arguing out the
whole case afresh. For, absurd though its logic was, it had touched
her conscience. Was it conscience (she asked herself) or but the old
habit of trembling at her father's word, which kept her so uneasy in
disobeying him?

She came to no new conclusion; for a sense of injustice gave a twist
to her thinking from the start. All his daughters held Mr. Wesley in
awe: they never dreamed, for instance, of comparing their lovers with
him in respect of dignity or greatness. They assumed that their
brothers inherited some portion of that greatness, but they required
none in the men to whom they were ready to give their hands; nay,
perhaps unconsciously rejoiced in the lack of it, having lived with
it at home and found it uncomfortable.

They were proud of it, of course, and knew that they themselves had
some touch of it, if but a lunar glow. They read the assurance in
their mother's speech, in her looks; and