“Well, father and mother, if you must know so particular, wasn’t that Sir Jasper Standish as was driving the high curricle away from Pitfold Church this morning? The stout gentleman, with the kind of red eye, and it rolling?” “Aye, aye,” grumbled the farmer, “the very man, my dear, and a hard gentleman he be. And queer tales there are about him. ’Tis a good thing he comes to Standish Hall but seldom. Aye, aye, ’twas him driving them bloods in the curricle. And a mort of fine ladies and gentlemen in the barouche. They’ll be staying Christmas, I reckon.” “Aye,” corroborated Mrs. Pounce. “A twenty-pound jar of my best salt, and six turkeys, no less, not to speak of the geese--aye, and a ham, cured in that very chamber in the chimbley, child. But, dear, to be sure, was you set against meeting Sir Jasper just for the seeing of him step into his curricle?” “You didn’t happen to note, mother, the gentleman who stepped in after him?” Farmer Pounce and his wife exchanged a scared look, and then by common consent transferred it to their daughter. There was silence, broken only by the cheerful song of the kettle on its chain over the embers, and the stertorous breathing of the infant farmer in the cot. Then, with a catch in her breath: “Well, child?” ventured Mother Pounce. Once more Pamela tossed her head. She was seated at a corner of the kitchen table, needle, scissors, and workbox at her elbow, and she turned and twisted the lilac satin rosette in her hand. “Well,” she said at last, without looking up. “I don’t happen to want to meet him, that’s all.” “How, my dear?” Mrs. Pounce shot a frightened glance at her husband’s grim face, and another at her daughter’s bright, bent head. “Ain’t the young gentleman a friend of yours?” she asked faintly. Pamela snapped her thread. “You do want to know a lot, don’t you, mother dear? But there! There’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of. That young gentleman has the good taste to admire me a mortal lot, but he ain’t got the good taste, in my opinion, to admire me the right way. He came after me to Canterbury, knowing I was due here for my Christmas holiday, and I sent him packing, and, thinks I, ’tis done now, once for all, and we’ll be the best of friends at a distance. And you could have knocked me down with a feather when I see his black eye roaming round the church this morning. Encourage him by going with you to-night? That would never do, Pamela, my girl! says I to myself, and----” “What dost mean by the right way, daughter?” interrupted the farmer, who had been ruminating her words, and not found them to his liking. The veins of his forehead were swelled; the hand that gripped the wooden arm of his chair shook.