She sat a long time with the letter in her hand, read it again and yet again. She forgot the night terrors, began to question herself. Of what had she been so frightened? What had Stevens told her? Only that a shabby man had questioned cook about their visitors. Now she wanted to analyse and sift the trouble, get to bedrock with it. She rang the bell and sent for the maids. They had singularly little to tell her; summarised it came to this: A shabby man had hung about Carbies all Monday; cook had called him up to the back door and asked him what he was after—“No good, I’ll be bound,” she told him. He had paid her a compliment and said that “with her in the kitchen it was no wonder men ’ung about.” And after that they seemed to have had something of a colloquy and cook had been asked if she walked out with anybody. “Like his nasty impidence,” she commented, when telling the story to her mistress. “I up and told him whether I walked out with anybody or not I wasn’t for the likes of him.” It was not without question and cross-question Margaret elicited that this final snub was not given until after tea. Cook defended the invitation. “It’s ’ard if in an establishment like this you can’t offer a young man a cup of tea.” She complained, not without waking a sympathetic echo in Margaret’s own heart, that Pineland was that dull, not a bit o’ life in it. Married men came round with the carts and a girl delivered the milk. “‘E was pleasant company enough till ’e started arskin’ questions.” Then it appeared it was Stevens who “gave him as good as he gave,” asking him what it was he did want to know, and being satirical with him. The housemaid had chimed in with Stevens; there may have been some little feminine jealousy at the back of it. Cook was young and frivolous, the two others more sedate. Stevens and the housemaid must have set upon cook and her presumed admirer. In any case the young man was given his congé immediately after tea, before he had established a footing. Stevens’ report had been exaggerated, Margaret’s terror excessive and unreasonable. She dismissed the erring cook now with the mildest of rebukes, then set herself to write to Gabriel. The time was limited, since the man was returning by the 5.5. She heard later, by the way, that he quite replaced the stranger in the cook’s facile affections. Stevens again was responsible for the statement that cook was “that light and talked away to any man.” Contrasting with herself, Stevens, who “didn’t ’old with making herself cheap.” Margaret wrote slowly, even if it were only a letter. She had to recall her mood, to analyse the panic. She was quite calm now. _His_ letter seemed exaggerated beyond what the occasion or the telegram demanded. _Dearest_:—