"Oh, nothing!" said Laura, dashing the merry tears from her eyes. She proceeded to roll up her sleeves, and plunge her hands and arms into the bowl of warm water that Polly had set before her. Meanwhile, Polly, very big and square, much reddened also by the fuss of household work, stood just behind her cousin's shoulder, looking down, half in envy, half in admiration, at the slimness of the white wrists and pretty fingers. A little later the two girls, all traces of their housework removed, came back into the kitchen. Daffady and Mrs. Mason had disappeared. "Where is Cousin Elizabeth?" said Laura rather sharply, as she looked round her. Polly explained that her mother was probably shut up in her bedroom reading her Bible. That was her custom on a Sunday afternoon. "Why, I haven't spoken to her at all!" cried Laura. Her cheek had flushed. Polly showed embarrassment. "Next time yo coom, mother'll tak' mair noatice. She was takkin stock o' you t' whole time, I'll uphowd yo." "That isn't what I wanted," said Laura. She walked to the window and leaned her head against the frame. Polly watched her with compunction, seeing quite plainly the sudden drop of the lip. All she could do was to propose to show her cousin the house. Laura languidly consented. So they wandered again through the dark stone-slabbed dairy, with its milk pans on the one side and its bacon-curing troughs on the other; and into the little stuffy bedrooms upstairs, each with its small oak four-poster and patchwork counterpane. They looked at the home-made quilt of goosedown--Polly's handiwork--that lay on Hubert's bed; at the clusters of faded photographs and coloured prints that hung on the old uneven walls; at the vast meal-ark in Polly's room that held the family store of meal and oatcake for the year. "When we wor little 'uns, fadther used to give me an Hubert a silver saxpence the day he browt home t' fresh melder fro' t' mill," said Polly; "theer was parlish little nobbut paritch and oatcake to eat when we wor small. An now I'll uphold yo there isn't a farm servant but wants his white bread yanst a day whativver happens."