“So Maister Gentleman’s coom, has he?” shouted the farmer, triumphantly; and he had seized his stout ash stick, and was making with ponderous strides for the door, as if with the intention of inflicting bodily chastisement on the insolent new comer, when his son interposed, blushing a deep brick-red to the roots of his hair.

“Eh, but feyther,” he stammered, turning the door handle uneasily, and dividing his glances between the floor, the window, and his father’s boorish face, “it’s na t’ gentleman; it’s nobbut twea lasses.”

After which admission, he fell to blushing more violently than before.

“Twea lasses?” echoed Oldshaw, incredulously.

“Hey, feyther. An’ wan o’ them’s got a feace lik’ a rose.”

“Feace lik’ a rose?” thundered the farmer. “Doan’t thee daze tha dull wits lookin’ at wenches’ faces, for Ah tell tha Ah’ll have na son o’ mine hangin’ aboot t’ Hall noo.”

“She bain’t na lass for t’ likes o’ mea, feyther; yon lass is a leady,” said the lad, simply.

If the stranger’s fair face had not, as his father suggested, dazed his dull wits already, the young man would surely have had the tact to restrain these rash words, which fanned the flame of his father’s coarse malevolence.

“A leady! A foine leady! ta foine for any son o’ mine? Ah tell thee, feeal, t’ day’ll coom when tha foine leady’ll wish she wur good enoo for t’ loikes o’ thee; and good enoo she shall never be—tha heears?”

Though the young man’s head was bent in a listening attitude, and he assented in the meekest of gruff voices, the father guessed that this deep attention was not all for his discourse, when the sound of hoofs and wheels on the hard ground outside attracted him to the outer door, which he reached in time to see a luggage-laden cab slowly descend the hill and pass the inn door, giving time for a look at the two young faces inside. Mistress and maid evidently; both bright, eager, and rather anxious. The former met full the surly stare of the farmer, and she drew back her head as if a blast of chilling wind had met her on her approach to her new home. The little maid, who had rosy cheeks and what one may call retrousse features,[Pg 6] was less sensitive, and she looked out to resent this cold unwelcome with a contemptuous toss of the head.

[Pg 6]

“They’re reg’lar savages in these parts, Miss Olivia,” she 

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