“You were walking fast,” she said.  “I believe you’d have gone by if I hadn’t spoken.”

“The frost is sharp enough to make one move briskly and I’ve something to do when I get back.”

“Busy lad!” said Janet, in a mocking voice.  “You’re always in a hurry, Kit I suppose Peter works you hard?”

“He says I work him harder than he likes,” Kit replied, smiling.  “Perhaps the truth is he lets me have my way.”

“You’re lucky,” Janet remarked with a sigh.  “It’s nice to be able to do what you like.  There’s only one way at the Mill house, and that’s father’s.  But I suppose you agree with him that women’s ideas don’t count?”

“I daresay their ideas are as sound as ours, but I don’t know much about it.  We have no women except old Bella and the dairymaid at Ashness.”

“And you never miss them?  In that big, lonely house!”

Kit mused for a moment.  Sometimes, particularly on summer evenings when they did not light the lamps and the shadows of the fells rested on the old building, Ashness was lonely and drearily quiet.  He had thought now and then the difference would be marked if a woman’s laugh rang through the dim rooms and a graceful figure sat by the hearth.  Still, his imagination had not pictured Janet there.

“Oh, well,” he said, “we’re out all day and when we come home there are letters to write and books to read.”

“Letters and books!” said Janet.  “Kit, I wonder if you’re quite alive.”  Then she laughed, provocatively.  “Anyhow, you don’t seem to know when you’re given a chance of being nice.”

Kit did not answer and wished she would let him go.  He felt awkward and thought Janet knew this, for she resumed:  “However, one mustn’t expect too much and you want to get back.  It’s a habit of yours.  You were in a hurry to get away the last time I saw you, when the stone-boat broke Creighton’s wall.”

“I’d been at work since morning in the snow.”

“And Miss Osborn was waiting for you in the lonning?”

“No,” said Kit sharply; “she was not.”

“Anyhow she was with you, before she stole away.”

“She didn’t steal away,” Kit began indignantly, but hesitated.  Now he came to think about it, Grace had gone as quietly as possible.

“You mean Miss Osborn does nothing undignified?  For all that, she didn’t want Mrs. Creighton to see her.  I don’t suppose Osborn would be pleased to know his daughter and you went for moonlight walks on the fells.”

Kit knew Osborn would not like it, and since the dales folk are fond of gossip saw he must stop the story going round.

“I had not gone for a walk with Miss Osborn.  I met her as I came down from the moor.  She didn’t know I was coming.”

“So she wasn’t waiting for you?” Janet remarked, with a hint of mockery.  She stopped, and putting her hand on Kit’s arm, pushed him nearer the hedgerow as a man and woman came round a neighboring corner.