little slap. "Now wash your face, like a good girl, and come down to
supper: and afterwards you shall tell me all the news of home.
There's one thing"--and she eyed Patty drolly--"I can trust you to be
accurate."

"Do you mean to tell me that you can look father in the face--"
But here Patty broke off, at the sound of hoofs on the gravel below.

"There will be no need," said Hetty quietly, "if, as I think, he is
mounting Bounce to ride home."

"Bounce? How did you know that Bounce brought us?"--for Bounce was
Mrs. Wesley's nag, and the Rector usually rode an old gray named
Mettle, but had taken of late to a filly of his own breeding.

"I ought to remember Bounce's shuffle," answered Hetty. "Nay, I
should have recognised it on the road two miles back if--if I hadn't
been--"

She came to a full stop, in some confusion. Nevertheless she was
right; and the girls arrived downstairs to learn from Mrs. Grantham
that their father had ridden off, declining her offer of supper and
scoffing at her fears of highwaymen.

And the days went by. Hetty could not help telling herself that
Patty was a disappointment. But she was saved from reflecting on it
overmuch: for Mrs. Grantham (after forty years of comfort without
one) had conceived a desire to be waited on and have her hair dressed
by a maid, and between Mrs. Grantham's inability to discover
precisely what she wanted done by Patty, and Patty's unhandiness in