He was very amiable, and insisted on Bram’s coming into the dining-room with him. As Bram neither smoked nor drank, however, Theodore’s offer of whisky and cigars was thrown away. But Bram sat down and made a very good audience, laughing at his host’s stories and jokes, so that he found himself forced into accepting an invitation to come in again on the following evening. By Theodore’s wish it became Bram’s frequent custom to spend an hour at the farmhouse in the evening; and the young man soon availed himself of the intimacy thus begun to make himself useful to Claire in a hundred ways. He would chop wood in the yard, mend broken furniture, fetch things from the town, and bargain for her for her poultry, suggest and help to carry out reformations in her management of the dairy--doing everything unobtrusively, but making his shrewd common sense manifest in a hundred practical ways. And Claire was grateful, rather shy of taking advantage of his kindness, but giving him such reward of smiles and thanks as more than repaid him for labor which was pleasure indeed. Sometimes Christian Cornthwaite would be at the farm, and on these occasions Bram saw little of Claire, who was always monopolized by her cousin. Christian was as devoted as Bram could have wished; but, if Theodore thought that the young man delayed his coming, he did not scruple to send his daughter on some excuse to call at Holme Park, always refusing Bram’s humble offers to take the message or to escort Claire. The one thing Bram could have wished about Claire was that she should be less submissive to her unscrupulous father in matters like this. He would have had her refuse to go up to Holme Park, where she was always received, as Bram knew, with the coldness which ought to have been reserved for Theodore. And especially did Bram feel this now that he knew, from Theodore’s own lips, that the notes he sent by his daughter’s hand to Josiah Cornthwaite were seldom answered. It made Bram’s blood boil to know this, and that in the face of this fact Theodore continued to send his daughter up to his rich cousin’s house on begging errands. Bram was in the big farm kitchen by himself one cool September evening, busily engaged in making a new dressing-table for Claire out of some old boxes. He had his coat off, and was sawing away, humming to himself as he did so, when, turning to look for something he wanted, he found, to his surprise, that Claire, whom he had not seen that evening, was sitting in the room. She had taken her hat off, and was sitting with it in her lap, so silently, so sadly, that Bram, who was not used to this mood in the volatile girl, was struck with astonishment. For a moment he stood, saw in hand, looking at her without speaking. “Miss Claire!” exclaimed he at last. “Well?” “When did you come in? I never saw you come in!”