has taken the steers to market, I suppose? I didn't see them in the
three acre. Oh, and, Jason, I found someone fishing in the dale; you
must get a notice board and put it up where the road runs near the
river; the tourists' time is coming on, and though they don't often
come this side of the lake, some of them may, and we can't afford to
have the river poached. And, Jason, look to Ruppert's off-hind shoe; I
think it's loose; and--" She stopped with a short laugh. "But that's
enough for one time, isn't it? Oh, Jason, if I were only a man, how
much better it would be!"

"Yes, miss," assented Jason, simply, with another touch of his
forehead.

She sighed and laughed again, and gathering up her habit--she hadn't to
raise it much--she went through an open door-way into a wild, but
pretty garden, and so to the back of one of the most picturesque houses
in this land of the picturesque. It was built of grey stone which age
had coloured with a tender and an appreciative hand; a rich growth of
ivy and clematis clung lovingly over a greater portion of it so that
the mullioned windows were framed by the dark leaves and the purple
flower. The house was long and rambling and had once been flourishing
and important, but it was now eloquent of decay and pathetic with the
signs of "better times" that had vanished long ago. A flight of worn
steps led to a broad glass door, and opening the latter, the girl
passed under a curved wooden gallery into a broad hall. It was dimly
lit by an oriel window of stained glass, over which the ivy and
clematis had been allowed to fall; there was that faint odour which
emanates from old wood and leather and damask; the furniture was
antique and of the neutral tint which comes from age; the weapons and
the ornaments of brass, the gilding of the great pictures, were all dim