Estelle promised to let him drive, and that privilege in itself proved a temptation too great to resist.  His mother’s word finally convinced him, and he drove an elderly pony so considerately that his hostess praised him.

“I see you are kind to dumb things,” she said.  “I am glad of that, for they are very understanding and soon know who are their friends and who are not.”

“If beasts treat me well,” he answered, “then I treat them well.  And if they treated me badly, then I’d treat them badly.”

She did not argue about this; indeed, all that day her care was to amuse him and hear his opinions without boring him if she could avoid doing so.

He remained shy at first and quiet.  From time to time she was in a fair way to break down his reserve; but he seemed to catch himself becoming more friendly and, once or twice, after laughing at something, he relapsed into long silence and looked at her from under his eyelids suspiciously when he thought she was not looking at him.  Thus she won, only to lose what she had won, and when they reached the breezy cliffs of Eype, Estelle reckoned that she stood towards him pretty much as she stood at starting.  But slowly, surely, inevitably, before such good temper and tact he thawed a little.  They tethered the pony, gave it a nosebag and then spread their meal.  Abel was quick and neat.  She noticed that his hands were like his mother’s—­finely tapered, suggestive of art.  But on that subject he seemed to have no ideas, and she found, after trying various themes, that he cared not in the least for music, or pictures, but certainly shared his father’s interest in mechanics.

Abel talked of the Mill—­self-consciously at first; yet when he found that Estelle ignored the past, and understood spinning, he forgot himself entirely for a time under the spell of the subject.

They compared notes, and she saw he was more familiar than she with detail.  Then, while still forgetting his listener, Abel remembered himself and his talk of the Mill turned into a personal channel.  There is no more confidential thing, by fits and starts, than a shy child; and just as Estelle felt the boy would never come any closer, or give her a chance to help him, suddenly he startled her with the most unexpected utterance.

“You mightn’t know it,” he said, “but by justice and right I should have the whole works for my very own when Mister Ironsyde died.  Because he’s my father, though I daresay he pretends to everybody he isn’t.”

“I’m very sure Mister Ironsyde doesn’t feel anything but jolly kind and friendly to you, Abel.  He doesn’t pretend he isn’t your father.  Why should he?  You know he’s often offered to be friends, and he even forgave you for trying to burn down the Mill.  Surely that was a pretty good sign he means to be friendly?”

“I don’t want his friendship, because he’s not good to mother.  He served her very badly.  I understand things a lot better than you might think.”