"You’ve no call to go raking up yon d--d rubbish!" Mr. Addison burst out, crimson to the hair, and quite forgetting the obligations of his Christian mission. He had said the same thing to Eliza’s eldest lass, and much about the same time, and knew that Eliza knew it as well as he. "Folks isn’t right in their heads when they’re courtin’, as everybody knows, and it’s real mean to bring it agen ’em after all these years. As for Geordie Thornthet, there was lile or nowt I could learn him, and that’s sure! T’lasses was always after him like bees at a bottle o’ rum." "Nay, now, you mean our Jim!" Jim’s mother corrected him with an air of offence. "Nobody never reckoned nowt o’ Geordie but May Fleming. He couldn’t hold a candle to Jim, any day o’ the week. Folk said they couldn’t tell ’em apart, but I never see a scrap o’ likeness myself." She glanced defiantly round the table, as if expecting opposition, and then swung round eagerly as Sally reappeared. "Well, my lass, well?" she rapped out,--"did she tell you anything more? You’ve taken your time about coming back, I’m sure!" "Nay, she said nowt fresh," Sally answered evasively, without meeting her eyes. She advanced to the table and began to gather the china together, ready for clearing away. Her mother pushed back her chair with an angry scrape. "Well, of all the gert, helpless gabies!" she exploded violently. "I made sure she’d talk when she’d gitten you by herself. Didn’t she say when letter come, or how much brass there was, or owt? ... Eh, well, it’s never Geordie as made it, that I’ll swear!" "She said it was Geordie." Sally went on mechanically with her task, collecting cups and plates from under the noses of the still-stupefied clan. "It’s real nice, anyway, to see somebody happy," she added suddenly, raising her eyes to look at the smug cousin. Elliman met them unexpectedly and coloured furiously. On a sudden remorseful impulse he shuffled a couple of plates together, and handed them to her with a deprecating air. "I can’t say she looked very set up about it, anyhow!" Eliza sneered. "What, she was even more glumpy than usual, seemed to me!" "More like a burying than a home-coming, by a deal!" Mary Phyllis finished for her, with a scornful laugh. "As for Uncle Simon, he was as cross as a pair of shears!" Emily Marion added in a fretted tone. The Thornthwaites were making things awkward to-day for the bride-to-be. Simon had nearly queered the engagement at the start, and now the company’s interest was all for a Thornthwaite whom she had never seen. "Not how _I_ should take good news, certainly!" Elliman said, hoping that no one had noticed his menial act. "I should have something more to say for myself, I hope, than that." Eliza’s eyes brightened considerably at this unanimous point of view.