"Nay; I've had my plump time. I be near five-an'-forty. Yet I was round once, an' so milky as a young filbert nut. Now I be in the middle season, when us does our hard work. But you--I seem Dartymoor will soon bring colour to your cheeks, though it couldn't make they eyes no brighter. Here, take an' drink, will 'e? I love to see young things drinking milk. Milk be the very starting-place of life, come to think of it. I never had no babies, worse luck, though I always felt a gert softness for 'em." "But I'm not a baby, Mrs. Beer; I'm nearly seventeen!" Grace laughed and drank. The lustre of her red lips dulled through the milky film. She gasped after her drink, and Dinah saw her small white teeth. "You'm a bowerly maiden," she said, with extreme frankness. "So lovely as the bud o' the briar in June; an' Dartymoor will make a queen of 'e afore long. Fresh air, an' sweet water, an' miles of heather to ride over. Your eyes be old friends to me, miss--the brown of the leaves in autumn--just like my dead sister's." "I have my father's eyes," said Grace; but Dinah questioned it. "His be darker far. There ban't no storm in yours--they don't flash lightning. An', please God, they'll have no cause to rain either. Wealth's a wonderful thing, though what's best worth money ban't purchasable all the same." Richard Beer had arrived and heard his wife's platitude. "Money's a power 'pon Dartymoor, however," he said, "an' I'm glad the master 'pears to be made of it, if I may say so without offence, Miss." "Not at all," declared Grace. "Father isn't made of money, and you mustn't think so. He looks for a return very soon for all his outlay." Beer touched his hat with great respect before answering. "As to that, mustn't count on no miracles, Miss Malherb. The master be larning that a'ready. Us can't go no quicker'n Nature's own gait. She won't be pushed because a chap here an' there goes bankrupt. 'Tis only at love-making she works so fast, not at farm-making." "Her ways do often look slow to a man in a hurry," said Dinah. "But us have got to wait for 'em to work, all the same," concluded Beer, "an' all the cusses of David never made one blade o' grass sprout so quick as a drop of warm rain." This apparent allusion to her father's forcible modes of speech saddened Grace. "'Tis very true," she answered, then turned to the house and went in to breakfast. CHAPTER VI MR. PETER NORCOT