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She was smiling a little to herself over the old woman’s garrulous confidences when he entered, and it was evident that he caught the smile, for he looked from her to his housekeeper with a touch of sharpness.

Granny Grimshaw hastened to efface herself with apologetic promptitude, and retired to the scullery to wash up.

Doris turned at once to her host. “Will you take me over the mill some day?” she asked.

He looked momentarily surprised at the suggestion, and then in a second he smiled. “Of course. When will you come?”

“On Sunday?” she ventured.

“It won’t be working then.”

“No. But other days you are busy.”

Jeff dropped upon his knees again in front of her, and turned his attention to brushing the worst of the mud from her skirt. He attacked it with extreme vigour, his smooth lips firmly shut.

At the end of nearly a minute he paused. “I shan’t be too busy for that any day,” he said.

“Not really?” Doris sounded a little doubtful.

He looked at her, and somehow his brown eyes made her lower her own. They held a mastery, a confidence, that embarrassed her subtly and quite inexplicably.

“Come any time,” he said, “except market-day. Mrs. Grimshaw will always know where I am to be found, and will send me word.”

She nodded. “I shall come one morning then. I will ride round, shall I?”

He returned to his task, faintly smiling. “Don’t take any five-barred gates on your way!” he said.

“No, I shan’t do that again,” she promised. “Five-barred gates have their drawbacks.”

“As well as their advantages,” said Jeff Ironside enigmatically.

CHAPTER IV

CORN

“Master Jeff!” The kitchen door opened with a nervous creak and a wrinkled brown face, encircled by the frills of a muslin nightcap, peered cautiously in. “Are you asleep, my dear?” asked Granny Grimshaw with tender solicitude.

He was sitting at the table with his elbows upon it and his head in his hands. She saw the smoke curling upwards from his pipe, and rightly deduced from this that he was not asleep.

She came forward, candle in hand. “Master Jeff, you’ll pardon me, I’m sure. But it’s getting so late–nigh upon twelve o’clock. You won’t be getting anything of a night’s rest if you don’t go to bed.”

Jeff raised his head. His eyes, sombre with thought, met hers. “Is it late?” he said abstractedly.

“And you such an early riser,” said Granny Grimshaw.

She went across to the fire and began to rake it out, he watching her in silence, still with that sombre look in his dark eyes.

Very suddenly Granny Grimshaw turned and, poker in hand, confronted him. She was wearing a large Paisley shawl over her pink flannel nightdress, but the figure she presented, though quaint, was not unimposing.

“Master Jeff,” she said, “don’t you be too modest and retiring, my dear. You’re just as good as the best of ’em.”

A slow, rather hard smile drew the corners of the man’s mouth. “They don’t think so,” he observed.

“They mayn’t,” said Granny Grimshaw severely. “But that don’t alter what is. You’re a good man, and, what’s more, a man of substance, which is better than can be said for old Colonel Elliot, with one foot in the grave, so to speak, and up to his eyes in debt. He owes money all over the place, I’m told, and the place is mortgaged for three times its proper value. His wife has a little of her own, so they say; but this poor young lady as was here this morning, she’ll be thrown on the world without a penny to her name. A winsome young lady, too, Master Jeff. And she don’t look as if she were made to stand many hard knocks. She may belong to the county, as they say, but her heart’s in the right place. She’d make a bonny mistress in this old place, and it wants a mistress badly enough. Old Granny Grimshaw has done her best, my dear, and always will. But she isn’t the woman she was.” An odd, wheedling note crept into the old woman’s voice. “She’ll be wanting to sit in the chimney-corner soon, Master Jeff, and just mind the little ones. You wouldn’t refuse her that?”