Was she glad he was coming? She laid down her brush and mused, looking into the depths of her mirror. Yes, she was glad. She did not think she should like him. She felt that he was hostile, scornful, dissatisfied. But Mitchelhurst was quiet--so few people ever came to it, and if they _did_ come they went away without a word--and at eighteen quiet is wearisome, and a spice of antagonism is refreshing. Did he hate her as her uncle had said? Time would show. She took her little cross from the dressing table, and looked at it with a new interest. No, she did not like him. "But, after all," said Barbara to herself, "he is a Rothwell, and my fairy godmother introduced us!" Many miles away a bunch of hips, scarlet and orange, lay by a scribbled paper. They had had adventures since they were pulled from a Mitchelhurst brier that afternoon. They had been lost and found, and travelling by rail had nearly been lost again. A clumsy porter, shouldering a load, had blundered against an absorbed young man, who was just grasping a rhyme; and the red berries fell between them to the dusty platform, and were barely saved from perils of hurrying feet. Still, though a little bruised and spoilt, they glowed ruddily in the candle-light, and the paper beside them said-- "_Speech was forbidden me; I could but stay, Ambushed behind a leafless hawthorn screen, And look upon her passing. She had been To pluck red berries on that autumn day, And Love, who from her side will never stray, Stole some for pity, seeing me unseen, And sighing, let them fall, that I might glean-- 'Poor gift,' quoth he, 'that Time shall take away!' Nay, but I mock at Time! It shall not be That, fleet of foot, he robs me of my prize; Her smile has kindled all the sullen skies, Blessed the dull furrows, and the leafless tree, And year by year the autumn, ere it dies, Shall bring my rosy treasure back to me!_" CHAPTER III. "WELCOME TO MITCHELHURST PLACE."