hard to maintain, and presently began to doubt if he
could be guilty of the imputation. Nor could she be wholly
blind to the fact that the groom had come to take a marked
interest in her. She noted that he made occasion for frequent
interviews, and that he dropped all pretence of speaking to
her in his affected Somerset dialect. When now she ventured
out of doors, she was almost certain to encounter him, and
rarely escaped without his speaking to her; while he often
came into the kitchen on frivolous pretexts when she was
working there, and seemed in no particular haste to depart.

Several times he was detected by Mrs. Meredith thus idling
within doors, and was sharply reproved for it. Neither to this,
nor to the squire's orders that he should put an end to his
"night-walking" and to his trips to the village, did he pay
the slightest heed.

Fownes entered the kitchen one morning in November
while Janice and Sukey were deep in the making of some
grape jelly, carrying an armful of wood; for the bond-servant
for once had willingly assumed a task that had hitherto been
Tom's. Putting the logs down in the wood-box, he stood
with back to the fire, studying Miss Meredith, as, well covered
with a big apron, with rolled up sleeves, flyaway locks, and
flushed cheeks, she pounded away in a mortar, reducing loaf
sugar to usable shape.

"Now youse clar right out of yar," said Sukey, who, though
the one servant who was fond of Charles, like all good cooks,
was subject to much ferment of mind when preserving was to