“Saddle it to-morrow morning,” she said, “and I will come and try it.  The brindle cow has got into the corn, and the fence wants mending down by the pool; you must get William to help you, and do it at once.  He has taken the steers to market, I suppose?  I didn’t see them in the three acre.  Oh, and, Jason, I found someone fishing in the dale; you must get a notice board and put it up where the road runs near the river; the tourists’ time is coming on, and though they don’t often come this side of the lake, some of them may, and we can’t afford to have the river poached.  And, Jason, look to Ruppert’s off-hind shoe; I think it’s loose; and—­” She stopped with a short laugh.  “But that’s enough for one time, isn’t it?  Oh, Jason, if I were only a man, how much better it would be!”

“Yes, miss,” assented Jason, simply, with another touch of his forehead.

She sighed and laughed again, and gathering up her habit—­she hadn’t to raise it much—­she went through an open door-way into a wild, but pretty garden, and so to the back of one of the most picturesque houses in this land of the picturesque.  It was built of grey stone which age had coloured with a tender and an appreciative hand; a rich growth of ivy and clematis clung lovingly over a greater portion of it so that the mullioned windows were framed by the dark leaves and the purple flower.  The house was long and rambling and had once been flourishing and important, but it was now eloquent of decay and pathetic with the signs of “better times” that had vanished long ago.  A flight of worn steps led to a broad glass door, and opening the latter, the girl passed under a curved wooden gallery into a broad hall.  It was dimly lit by an oriel window of stained glass, over which the ivy and clematis had been allowed to fall; there was that faint odour which emanates from old wood and leather and damask; the furniture was antique and of the neutral tint which comes from age; the weapons and the ornaments of brass, the gilding of the great pictures, were all dim and lack-lustre for want of the cleaning and polishing which require many servants.  In the huge fire-place some big logs were burning, and Donald and Bess threw themselves down before it with a sigh of satisfaction.  The girl looked round her, just as she had looked round the stable-yard; then, tossing her soft hat and whip on the old oak table, she went to one of the large heavy doors, and knocking, said in her clear voice: 

“Father, are you there?”

Inside the room an old man sat at a table.  It was littered with books, some of them open as if he had been consulting them; but before him lay an open deed, and at his elbow were several others lying on an open deed-box.  He was thin and as faded-looking and as worn with age as the house and the room, lined with dusty volumes and yellow, surface-cracked maps and pictures.  He wore a long dressing-gown which was huddled round him as if he were cold, though a fire of logs almost as large as the one in the hall was burning in the open fire-place.