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“I think, my dear,” she said gently, “that I will have to tell you a little bit of our family history that may not be very pleasant to hear or tell. Perhaps you don’t know that when your mother married we–we–did not exactly approve of her marriage. Perhaps we were mistaken; at any rate it was wrong and foolish to let it come between us and her as we have done. But that is how it was. None of us approved, as I have said, but none of us was so bitter as your Uncle Paul. Your mother was his favourite sister, and he was very deeply attached to her. She was only a year younger than he. When he bought the Greenwood farm she went and kept house for him for three years before her marriage. When she married, Paul was terribly angry. He was always a strange man, very determined and unyielding. He said he would never forgive her, and he never has. He has never married, and he has lived so long alone at Greenwood with only deaf old Mrs. Bree to keep house for him that he has grown odder than ever. One of us wanted to go and keep house for him, but he would not let us. And–I must tell you this although I hate to–he was very angry when he heard we had invited you to visit us, and he said he would not come near the Grange as long as you were here. Oh, you can’t realize how bitter and obstinate he is. We pleaded with him, but I think that only made him worse. We have felt so bad over it, your Aunt Ellen and your Uncle George and I, but we can do nothing at all.”

Worth had listened gravely. The story was all new to her, but she had long thought there must be a something at the root of her mother’s indifferent relations with her old home and friends. When Aunt Charlotte, flushed and half-tearful, finished speaking, a little glimmer of fun came into Worth’s grey eyes, and her dimple was very pronounced as she said,

“Then, if Uncle Paul will not come to see me, I must go to see him.”

“My dear!” cried both her aunts together in dismay. Aunt Ellen got her breath first.

“Oh, my dear child, you must not think of such a thing,” she cried nervously. “It would never do. He would–I don’t know what he would do–order you off the premises, or say something dreadful. No! No! Wait. Perhaps he will come after all–we will see. You must have patience.”

Worth shook her head and the smile in her eyes deepened.

“I don’t think he will come,” she said. “Mother has told me something about the Ingelow stubbornness. She says I have it in full measure, but I like to call it determination, it sounds so much better. No, the mountain will not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed will go to the mountain. I think I will walk down to Greenwood this afternoon. There, dear aunties, don’t look so troubled. Uncle Paul won’t run at me with a pitchfork, will he? He can’t do worse than order me off his premises, as you say.”

Aunt Charlotte shook her head. She understood that no argument would turn the girl from her purpose if she had the Ingelow will, so she said nothing more. In the afternoon Worth set out for Greenwood, a mile away.

“Oh, what will Paul say?” exclaimed the aunts, with dismal forebodings.

Worth met her Uncle Paul at the garden gate. He was standing there when she came up the slope of the long lane, a tall, massive figure of a man, with deep-set black eyes, a long, prematurely white beard, and a hooked nose. Handsome and stubborn enough Paul Ingelow looked. It was not without reason that his neighbours called him the oddest Ingelow of them all.