ul, even necessary. She could
hardly endure to be for an hour without her, and she had come to
rely upon her more and more in the conduct of business, especially
such as required sufficient scholarship to do correspondence and
keep accounts.

The hostess was proud of the girl's beauty and engaging manner,
and took to herself some of the credit of having her adopted
daughter regarded as the belle of Thursley. She was pleased to
see that the men admired her, not less than the women envied her.
There was selfishness in all this. Mrs. Verstage's heart was
without sincerity. She had loved Mehetabel as a babe, because the
child amused her. She liked her as a girl, because serviceable to
her, and because it flattered her vanity to think that her adopted
daughter should be so handsome.

Now, however, that the suspicion was engendered that her own son
might be set aside in favor of the adopted child, through Simon's
partiality, at once her maternal heart took the alarm, and turned
against the girl in resolution to protect the rights of Iver,
Mehetabel did not understand the workings of Susanna Verstage's
mind. She felt that the regard entertained for her was troubled.

She had heard Simon Verstage's remark about constituting her his
heir, but had so little considered it as seriously spoken, and
as embodying a resolution, that it did not now occur to her as an
explanation of the altered conduct of the "mother" towards herself.

Mehetabel felt instinctively that a vein of truer love throbbed
in the old host than in his wife; and now, with a hunger for some
word of kindness after the rebuff she had sustained, she stood up
and walked in the direction of the hayfield to meet Simon Verstage
on his return journey.

As she stepped along she heard a footfall behind her. The step
was quickened, and a hand was laid on her shoulder. She turned,
and exclaimed sharply:

"Bideabout--what do you want?"

"You, Matabel."

A man stayed her: the Broom-Squire.

"What with me?"

"I want you to listen to what I have to say."

"I can spare you a minute, not more. I expect father. He has gone
to look at the hay."

Mehetabel disengaged her shoulder from his grasp. She stepped
back. She had no liking for the Broom-Squire. Indeed, he inspired
her with a faint, undefined repugnance.

Jonas was now a middle-aged man, still occupying his farm in the
Punch-Bowl, making brooms, selling holly, cultivating his patch of
land, laying by money an