‘Why, Lizzie, my girl, where on earth have you been to?’ exclaimed her aunt, Mrs Barnes, as she appeared on the threshold. Mrs Barnes’ late husband had been brother to the very Isaac Barnes, once poacher, now gamekeeper on Farmer Murray’s estate, and there were scandal-mongers in Corston ill-natured enough to assert that the taint was in the blood, and that young Laurence Barnes was very much inclined to go the same way as his uncle had done before him. But at present he was a helper in the stables of Mavis Farm. ‘I’ve been along the marshes,’ said Lizzie, ‘gathering cockles, and they gave me sixpence for them up at the farm; and oh, aunt! I met Miss Rosa on my way back, and she says Larry must take me up to the big barn this evening to their harvest-home supper.’ Laurence Barnes was seated at his mother’s table already occupied in the discussion of a huge lump of bread and bacon, but as the name of his master’s daughter left Lizzie’s lips it would have been very evident to any one on the look-out for it that he started and seemed uneasy. ‘And what will you be doing at a dance and a supper, my poor girl?’ said her aunt, but not unkindly. ‘Come, Lizzie, sit down and take your dinner; that’s of much more account to you than a harvest merry-making.’ ‘Not till Larry has promised to take me up with him this evening,’ replied the girl gaily, and without the least fear of a rebuff. ‘You’ll do it, Larry, won’t you? for Miss Rosa said they’d all be there, and if she didn’t see me she’d send round to the cottage after me. She said, “Tell Larry I _insist_ upon it; she did, indeed!”’ ‘Well, then, I’m not going up myself, and so you can’t go,’ he answered roughly. ‘_Not going yourself!_’ The exclamation left the lips of both women at once. They could not understand it, and it equally surprised them. Larry—the best singer and dancer for twenty miles round, to refuse to go up to his master’s harvest-home! Why, what would the supper and the dance be without him? At least, so thought Mrs Barnes and Lizzie. ‘Aren’t you well, Larry?’ demanded the blind girl, timidly. ‘I’m well enough; but I don’t choose to go. I don’t care for such rubbish. Let ’em bide! They’ll do well enough without us.’ Lizzie dropt into her seat in silence, and began in a mechanical way to eat her dinner. She was terribly disappointed, but she did not dream of disputing her cousin’s decision. He was master in that house; and she would not have cared to go to the barn without Larry. Half the pleasure would be gone with his absence. He did not seem to see that. ‘Mother can take you up, Liz, if she has a mind to,’ he said, presently. ‘_I_ take her along of me!’ cried Mrs Barnes, ‘when I haven’t so much as a clean kerchief to pin across my shoulders. You’re daft, Larry. I haven’t been to such a thing as a dance since I laid your father in the churchyard, and if our Liz can’t go without me she must stop at home.’