on his lips.

"My late partner's daughter," he observed, keeping wide of the mark,
"usually does the cooking."

"Married?" asked the young man rapidly.

"She?--No," said Bates, taken by surprise.

_"Young_ lady?" asked the other, with more interest. Bates was not
accustomed to consider his ward under his head.

"She is just a young girl about seventeen," he replied stiffly.

"Oh, halibaloo!" cried the youth joyously. "Why, stranger, I haven't set
eyes on a young lady these two months. I'd give a five dollar-bill this
minute, if I had it, to set eyes on her right here and now." He took his
pipe from his lips and clapped his hand upon his side with animation as
he spoke.

Bates regarded him with dull disfavour. He would himself have given more
than the sum mentioned to have compassed the same end, but for different
reasons, and his own reasons were so grave that the youth's frivolity
seemed to him doubly frivolous.

"I hope," he said coldly, "that she will come in soon." His eyes
wandered involuntarily up the hill as he spoke.

"Gone out walking, has she?" The youth's eyes followed in the same
direction. "Which way has she gone?"