little punishment for the trick you played me at the mill-head?"

"It was all thy fault for insisting." Dorothy was too excited and angry to
cry, but she was as miserable as she had ever been in her life before. "I
didn't want thee to stay. People that force themselves where they are not
wanted must take what they get."

"What did you say, Dorothy?"

"I say I didn't want thee then. I do not want thee now. Thee may go back
to thy fiddling and dancing. I'd rather have one of those dumb brutes for
company to-night than thee, Walter Evesham."

"Very well; the reel has begun," said Evesham. "Fanny Jordan is waiting to
dance it with me, or if she isn't she ought to be. Shall I open the gate
for you?"

She passed out in silence, and the gate swung to with a heavy jar. She made
good speed down the lane and then waited outside the fence till her breath
came more quietly.

"Is that thee, Dorothy?" Rachel's voice called from the porch. She came out
to meet her daughter and they went along the walk together. "How damp thy
forehead is, child. Is the night so warm?" They sat down on the low steps
and Dorothy slid her arm under her mother's and laid her soft palm against
the one less soft by twenty years of toil for others. "Thee's not been
long, dear; was it as much as thee expected?"

"Mother, it was dreadful! I never wish to hear a fiddle again as long as I
live."