Mr. Daw did not show himself very much interested in the name, or in the worthy millers themselves. He was lost in a reverie. Molly made a movement about the plates and cheese and butter; insinuated the glass of milk under his very nose. All in vain. "Not the heir!" he reiterated again; "not the heir! And I have been picturing him in my mind as the heir all through these long years!" CHAPTER XXI THE STRANGER When Mrs. Chattaway and Cris drove off in the dog-cart, George Ryle did not follow them down the avenue, but turned to pursue his way round the house, which would take him to the fields: a shorter cut to his own land than the road. For a long time after his father's death, George could not bear to go through the field which had been so fatal to him; but he had lived down the feeling with the aid of that great reconciler--Time. Happening to cast his eyes on the grounds as he skirted them, which lay on this side the Hold, he saw Rupert Trevlyn. Leaping a dwarf hedge of azaroles, he hastened to him. "Well, old fellow! Taking a nap?" Rupert opened his half-closed eyes, and looked round. "I thought it was Cris again!" he exclaimed. "He was here just now." "Cris has gone out with his mother in the dog-cart. I don't like the horse he is driving, though." "Is it that new horse he has been getting?" "Yes; the one Allen had to sell." "What's the matter with it?" asked Rupert. "I saw it carrying Allen one day, and thought it a beautiful animal!" "It has a vicious temper, as I have been given to understand. And I believe it has never been properly broken in for driving. How do you feel to-day, Rupert?" "No great shakes. I wish I was as strong as you, George." George laughed pleasantly; and his voice, when he spoke, had a soothing sound in it. "So you may be, by the time you are as old as I am. Why, you have hardly done growing yet, Rupert. There's plenty of time for you to get strong." "What brings you up here, George? Anything particular?" "I saw Amelia to-day, and brought a message from her to her mother. Caroline is coming to us for the harvest-home, and Amelia wants to come too." "Oh, they'll let her," cried Rupert. "The girls can do just as they like." He, Rupert, leaned his chin on his hand, and began thinking of Amelia Chattaway. She was the oldest of the three younger children, and was at first under the tuition of Maude. But Maude could do nothing with her, the girl liking and taking; in fact she was too old both for Maude's control and instruction, and it was thought well to place her at a good school at Barmester, the school at which Caroline Ryle was being educated. Somehow Rupert's comforts were never added to by the presence of Amelia in the house, and he might have given way to a hope that she would not come home, had he been of a disposition to encourage such feelings.