allowances."

His tone was boyish still, but all the resentment had gone out of it.
There was a touch of arrogance in his bearing which was obviously natural
to him, but his apology was none the less sincere.

The slim figure on the path made a slight movement of dismay. "But you
must be drenched to the skin!" she said. "I was forgetting. Won't you
come in and get dry?"

He hunched his shoulders expressively. "No, thanks. It was my own fault,
as you kindly omit to mention. I must be getting back to the Abbey. My
grandfather is expecting me. He fidgets if I'm late."

He raised a hand to his cap, and would have turned away, but she made a
swift gesture of surprise, which arrested him. "Oh, you are young Mr.
Evesham!--I beg your pardon--you are Mr. Evesham! I thought I must have
seen you before!"

He stopped with a laugh. "I am commonly called 'Master Piers' in this
neighbourhood. They won't let me grow up. Rather a shame, what? I'm
nearly twenty-five, and the head-keeper still refers to me in private as
'that dratted boy.'"

She laughed for the first time. Possibly he had angled for that laugh.
"Yes, it is a shame!" she agreed. "But then Sir Beverley is rather old,
isn't he? No doubt it's the comparison that does it."

"He isn't old," said Piers Evesham in sharp contradiction. "He's only
seventy-four. That's not old for an Evesham. He'll go for another twenty