“Very true, but rather trite,” Osborn agreed.  “I don’t see how it applies.”

“Well, I’m really sympathetic about your spoiled day, but it looks as if all your disappointments sprang from the same cause.”

“Ah!” said Osborn, sharply; “I suppose you mean the coal yards’ lease?”

“I think I mean Bell’s greediness.  If he didn’t charge so much for his coal, Askew would not have cut the peat, and the children would not have been sent to gather wood.  Then Dowthwaite might not have grumbled about his wall; he feels the farmers have not been treated justly, and I imagine he blames you.”

Osborn knitted his brows.  “Then it’s an example of the fellow’s wrong-headed attitude!  He and one or two others are treated better than they deserve, and would not be satisfied with anything I did.  If you had to manage the estate, pay extortionate taxes, and make the unnecessary repairs the farmers demand, it would be interesting to see the line you would take.”

“Perhaps the right line isn’t easy,” Grace admitted.  “Still, if I wanted a guide, there’s the motto of our county town:  ‘Be just and fear not.’”

Osborn looked at her with indignant surprise, and then shrugged scornfully.  Thorn smiled.

“It’s an excellent motto; but they chose it some time since.  One imagines it’s out of date now.”

Grace colored and moved away, feeling embarrassed.  She had made herself ridiculous, and perhaps sentiment such as she had indulged was cheap; but it hurt to feel that she, so to speak, stood alone.  Although she had, no doubt, been imprudent, she had said what she felt, and Thorn had smiled.  She turned to him angrily when he followed her along the terrace.

“I daresay I am a raw sentimentalist, but I’m glad I’m not up to date,” she said.  “I hate your modern smartness!”

Thorn, noting the hardness of her voice, stopped with an apologetic gesture and let her go.

CHAPTER V

RAILTON’S TALLY

Winter had begun, and although the briars shone red along the hedgerows and the stunted oaks had not lost all their leaves, bitter sleet blew across the dale when Grace went up the muddy lonning to Mireside farm.  Railton’s daughter had for a time helped the housekeeper at Tarnside, and Grace, hearing that the farmer had been ill, was going to ask about him.  It was nearly dark when she entered the big kitchen.  The lamp had not been lighted, but a peat fire burned in the wide grate, where irons for cooking pots hung above the blaze.  A bright glow leaped up and spread about the kitchen, touching the people in the room, and then faded as she shut the massive door.

Grace thought her arrival had embarrassed the others, because nobody said anything for a moment or two.  Railton sat in an old oak chair by the fire, with a stick near his hand; Tom, the shepherd, occupied the middle of the floor; and Kit Askew leaned against the table, at which Mrs. Railton and Lucy sat.  Grace wished she could see them better, but the blaze had sunk and the fire burned low, giving out an aromatic smell, and throwing dull reflections on the old oak furniture, copper kettles, and tall brass candlesticks.  As a rule, the lonely homesteads in the dales are furnished well, with objects made long since and handed down from father to son.