’Then I ‘spose you’re going to run off like Netta?’

‘No, sir, never.’

’Why, “no, sir,” if you ‘ont promise?’

‘Because I could never do what you and my mistress would dislike.’

’Then you can promise, perhaps, never to marry my son Owen without my consent.’

‘Yes, sir, I can—­do—­that—­’

Gladys said these words very slowly, and turned very pale as she said them.  She clasped her hands firmly together with a visible effort.

’Well, you’re an odd girl; you ’ont promise one thing, and yet you as good as promise it in another way.  What’s the difference?’

Again the colour came and went.

’It would be wrong, sir, in me to make a son disobey a father, and I wouldn’t like to do it; so I can promise that; and maybe you may change.’

‘Then you love the boy?  Tell me the treuth.’

Gladys began to cry, and was a few moments before she could say, somewhat more resolutely than usual,—­

’Sir, my feelings are my own.  Mr Owen has been like a brother to me, and the mistress like a mother—­and you—­oh, sir! should I not love his mother’s son?’

Mr Prothero was touched; he could ask no more questions.

’There, there—­go you and get ready directly.  I promised Miss Gwynne to bring you back to Glanyravon, where she means to make you schoolmistress and lady’s maid, and all the rest.  I suppose you don’t want to go to Ireland?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Have you any relations there?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You don’t want to leave Glanyravon parish?’

’No, sir.  I would rather live and die there than anywhere else in the world.’

’Then go you and get ready; and, mind you, have some ale before you start.  I must keep my promise to Miss Gwynne; mind you yours to me.  You ‘ont encourage my son Owen without my consent’

’No, sir—­never.  And I do not wish or mean ever to marry any one, if you will only believe me.’

’I don’t believe any young ’ooman who says that.  You may as well go into a nunnery.  But I believe the rest till I find you out to the contrary.  Now, go you and get ready.’

‘Thank you, sir—­thank you.’

Soon after this conversation the farmer had mounted his good mare, who was as much refreshed as her master by a night’s rest, and with Gladys, en croupe, and Lion running by his side, he jogged back to his home.

‘We shall have a fine long journey, and a tiresome one enough,’ he muttered.  ’Thirty mile and carrying double is too much for my mare.—­take the ’oomen! they’ll be the death ’o me, one way and another.  There’s mother, and Netta, and Miss Gwynne, and now this Gladys!  This is the last time I’ll put myself out for any of ’em, or my name isn’t David Prothero.’

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE MISSIONARY.