When, with many thanks for the courtesies offered them, Mrs. Drane and her daughter had driven away, Miriam sat by herself on the piazza and thought. She had a good deal of time, now, to think, for Molly Tooney was a far more efficient servant than Phoebe had been, and although her brother gave her as much of his time as he could, she was of necessity left a good deal to herself. She began by thinking what an exceedingly gentlemanly man her brother was; in his ordinary working clothes he had been as much at his ease with those ladies as though he had been dressed in a city costume, which, however, would not have been nearly so becoming to him as his loose flannel shirt and broad straw hat. She then began to regret that her mind worked so slowly. If it had been quicker to act, she would have asked that young lady to come some day and go up in the haymow with her. It would be a positive charity to give a girl with longings, such as she saw that one had, a chance of knowing what real country life was. It would be pleasant to show things to a girl who really wanted to know about them. From this she began to think of Dora Bannister. Dora was a nice girl, but Miriam could not think of her as one to whom she could show or tell very much; Dora liked to do the showing and telling herself. "I truly believe," said Miriam to herself, and a slight flush came on her face, "that if she could have done it, she would have liked to stay here a week, and wear the teaberry gown all the time and direct everything,--although, of course, I would never have allowed that." With a little contraction of the brows, she went into the hall, where she heard her brother's step. CHAPTER XXIII THE HAVERLEY FINANCES AND MRS. ROBINSON "It bothers the head off of me," said Molly Tooney to Mike, as she sat eating her supper in the Cobhurst kitchen, "to try to foind out what thim two upstairs is loike, anyway, 'specially her. I've been here nigh onto two weeks, now, and I don't know her no betther than when I fust come. For the life of me I can't make out whether she's a gal woman or a woman gal. Sometimes she's one and sometimes t'other. And then there's he. Why didn't he marry and settle before he took a house to himself? And in the two Sundays I've been here, nather of thim's been to church. If they knowed what was becomin' to thim, they'd behave like Christians, if they are heretics." Mike sat at a little table in the corner of the kitchen with his back to Molly, eating his supper. He had enough of the Southern negro in him to make him dislike to eat with white people or to turn his face toward anybody while partaking of his meals. But he also had enough of a son of Erin in him to make him willing to talk whenever he had a chance. Turning his head a little, he asked, "Now look a here, Molly; if a man's a heretic, how can he be a Christian?"