ck
on the mantel--it was 8.15), "and, as thou sees, that'll be in
forty-five minutes. Of course, thou knows that I shall go wi' him."

"Eh, but how the world will talk, and what she'll have to bear!" broke
out Mary vehemently, as she sank back on a chair almost in tears. "And
in my heart I believe that she loves him, too. And thou must believe
that, too, and yet theere thou stands wi' that unnatural frown on thy
face, and will do nowt at all, although in thy heart thou knows thou
likes the missus as well as thou does the maister."

Suddenly springing to her feet, she caught him by the sleeve, and said
desperately: "Could thou not manage, John, lad, for the maister to be
just a little too late for the train?"

Without doubt John Herbert Bedford Lawson was in a most
ill-conditioned mood, for instead of being moved by the palpable
distress of the attractive suppliant, he turned his back ungraciously,
thrust his hands viciously under his ample coat-tails, elevated his
chin aggressively, and said airily, as he kept up a warlike tattoo on
the carpet with one of his heels: "John Lawson, thou art reet; it's
not the thow't o' thee going away that's causing her any trouble--thou
canst go to the uttermost parts o' the earth for all she cares, lad."

Turning and facing her, he said grandly: "I say once more that I know
o' nowt that can be done, Miss Mary Tiffin." He turned again, and this
time pulled out his watch.

For a few moments Mary sat in deep thought, and then a smile broke
over her face--she had realized where her base of operations had been
weak. Banishing the smile from her lips, to find refuge in her
twinkling eyes, she arose--to vanquish Mr. Lawson.

Quietly walking up behind him she gently laid one plump hand
caressingly on his shoulder. Wondrous was the change that stole over
his doughty face: the corrugated lines on his forehead gradually
vanished, his eyebrows hovered no longer belligerently near the lids,
while his chin--really a well-modelled one--receded slowly, but
surely, back to its accustomed position, revealing a very pleasant
mouth indeed. It could now be seen that the thin face of Mr. Lawson
was a most kindly one.

"John," began Mary, in a dangerously soft tone: "I--I think more about
thy going away than thou thinks. But thou knows how afeered I am that
they'll nivver come together again, and so--and--so, just only for the
moment, my thoughts had gone away from thee. And now thou knows this,
lad,