"Oh, my dear, ’tis nothing but ’er fancy. There, go along, I bain’t going to tell ’ee." "I don’t need for Gray to tell me Wastralls is a whisht old house for young maidens." "My dear," said Mrs. Tom reasonably, "you’ll be able to run ’ome any time to see us and yer auntie is goin’ to give yer twenty pound; good money, ’edn’t it?" "Iss, well, I know that’s all right," returned Richbell soberly. Sabina’s open-handedness had put many a pleasure in her way, nevertheless instinct warned her against the place and she was Mrs. Tom’s own child. "Well, why don’t you like goin’ there?" "I don’t feel I like," she hesitated, lowering her voice, "I don’t feel I like Uncle Leadville." "There’s no ’arm in ’im," encouraged the mother, "although ’e do look downy. Any’ow ’e’s nothing to do with you. You’ll be with yer auntie." "Iss." The girl could not put into words her feeling that Leadville being fundamentally different from the easy-going folk among whom she had hitherto lived was vaguely alarming. "Well, he never look yer straight in the face." "My dear, that’s the way of’n. ’E ’edn’t goin’ to take no notice of you." "Mammy!" She put her young arms round her mother’s neck, so proving herself the taller by a couple of inches, "I wish you would go down with me to-morrow morning—I don’t feel I like goin’ by myself." Who could resist Richbell, when Richbell changed from gay defiance to entreaty? Not Mrs. Tom! "Well, I’ll go down with you. I shall be able to see your auntie the same time. I’ll light up the fire before I go and the kettle’ll be boiling by the time I get back. Come, my dear," she turned and walked up the trim path of sea-gravel edged with quartz, "let’s be goin’ in, else we shan’t get up early in the mornin’." December dawns are late and though, as Mrs. Tom had feared, the tired family slept until after cockcrow, morning had not broken when she and Richbell hurried down between the tamarisks, silver-grey with frost, and in at the yard gate of Wastralls. George Biddick, crossing from the shed to the stables nodded a greeting, but otherwise the yard was deserted. Mrs. Tom called after him. "Pretty rough wind last night." "Iss," he said with a gesture towards the roof. "I see it’s blawed off one of the tiles and broke a pane of glass." "You won’t be able to get it mended now till after Christmas," said Mrs. Tom sympathetically. She pressed her face against the window, peering in. "No one up yet?" "Well, they didn’t go to bed till late last night," Richbell reminded her. "Dessay they’ve overslept theirself!" Mrs. Tom took the door key from under a stone where Sabina had hidden it in readiness. During the night, with one of the rapid changes to which that coast is liable, the wind had dropped. Frost had stilled the thousand voices of the earth and, in the house, doors hung without creak or movement and the chimneys were hushed. As she crossed the threshold Mrs. Tom shivered.