Mrs. Dixon looked at her with disapproval, but held her tongue.  Thyrza was not strictly her underling, though she was helping in the housework.  She was the daughter of the small farmer who had been for years the tenant of part of the old house, and had only just been evicted in preparation for the return of the owner of the property with his foreign wife.  If Thyrza were too much scolded she would take her ways home, and, as her parents spoilt her, she would not be coerced into returning.  And how another “day-girl” was to be found in that remote place, where, beyond the farm, a small house belonging to the agent, and a couple of cottages, the nearest house to the Tower was at least three miles away, Mrs. Dixon did not know.

“My word! what a night!” said Thyrza with another laugh a little stifled by the sweets she had just transferred from her pocket to her mouth.  “They’ll be drowned oot afore they get here.”

As she spoke, a wild gust flung itself over the house, as though trying its strength against the doors and windows, and the rain swished against the panes.

“Are t’ fires upstairs burnin’ reet?” asked Mrs. Dixon severely.  She had already told Thyrza half a dozen times that day that such a greed for sweet things as she displayed would ruin her digestion and her teeth; and it ruffled a dictatorial temper to be taken no more notice of than if she were a duck quacking in the farmyard.

“Aye, they’re burnin’,” said Thyrza, with a shrug.  Then she looked round her with a toss of her decidedly graceful head.  “But it’s a creepy old place howivver.  I’d not live here if I was paid.  What does Muster Melrose want wi’ coomin’ here?  He’s got lots o’ money, Mr. Tyson says.  He’ll nivver stay.  What was the use o’ turnin’ father out, an’ makkin’ a lot o’ trouble?”

“This house is not a farmin’ house,” said Dixon slowly, surveying the girl, as she sat on the packing-case swinging her feet, her straw-coloured hair and pink cotton dress making a spot of pleasant colour in the darkness as the lamp-light fell on them.  “It’s a house for t’ gentry.”

“Well, then, t’ gentry might clean it up an’ put decent furnishin’s into ‘t,” said Thyrza defiantly.  “Not a bit o’ paperin’ doon anywhere—­juist two three rooms colour-washed, as yo’ med do ’em at t’ workhouse.  An’ that big hole in t’ dinin’-room ceilin’, juist as ’twas—­and such shabby sticks o’ things upstairs an’ down as I nivver see!  I’ll have a good sight better when I get married, I know!”

Contempt ran sharply through the girl’s tone.

As she ceased speaking a step was heard in the corridor.  Thyrza leapt to the ground, Mrs. Dixon picked up her brush and duster, and Dixon resumed his tending of the fire.

A man in a dripping overcoat and leggings pushed his way rapidly through the cases, looking round him with an air of worried authority.

“I don’t call that much of a fire, Dixon.”