In her anxiety to hear the rest of the story, the landlady allowed this backhanded attack on her morals to pass unnoticed, and Roger began afresh. "Well, up they comes together, talkin' and laughin' quite friendly like, and my lady says to him, she says, 'Here's the rats you said I was to have killed,' she says, 'and isn't it a dear little dog?' she says. So I says to her, 'Aye, it be a good pup; it's killed fourteen since breakfast,' and I seemed to offend her like, for up she gets from where she'd been patting him, and she looks at Mr. Jack all in a blaze, and she says all angry like, 'That's what you call sport, is it?' she says. 'Mr. Digby wouldn't call it sport,' she says." "No more he wouldn't," said both the women simultaneously. "That's true enough," said Roger, slowly, "but Lady Relton, she bain't the smirking soft kind o' woman what likes to spare the rat and spoil the corn, and I can't rightly make out what's come over her to-day. She didn't seem herself to-day, not anyhow, and she seemed to take a pleasure in quarrelin' over everything Mr. Jack said, and then she laughed of him, she did. It worn't like my lady, it worn't, to talk soft stuff about killin' rats; that be more like t' other one what come after Mr. Raleigh last springtime, the one what had saucer eyes, and pretended to be fond of the child, with her nasty clingin', pretendin' ways." The last words were said with biting contempt, and the women sat silent and sipped their tea approvingly. But old Peter had different views concerning the "other one" alluded to, and he again made the effort to interrupt. "Eh, lad, but you be proper hard upon poor Miss Norah, proper hard you be, for sure. I wouldn't be saying as ye haven't your reasons for it, but she seemed a quiet sort of maiden enough, what didn't mean no harm to speak of, and what's suffered enough for her foolishness, I'll be bound." "I hope she has, I hope she has," exclaimed Roger, vehemently. "Those as comes with their sneaking ways tryin' for to corrupt honest folk deserves to suffer for it. No one doan't know why she didn't come back when Mr. Raleigh sent that letter after her, and no one doan't know why she didn't even answer it; but you take my word for it, it was Providence as interposed and wouldn't have nothink to do with her, and it's Providence as opens the way now to Mr. Raleigh if he'd only see it, and not want Providence to come down from heaven and poke him into it, so to speak. Who be that coming across the street?"