“And pray what for is she wanting to see me?  I am not related to her.  I owe her nothing.  I’m not going to give her anything and I don’t want to see her.”

“I suppose she wants your help in this new charity she has on hand.  She was very polite, and sent you all kinds of good wishes.  There is no harm in good wishes, is there?”

“I’m not so sure of that.  If Miss Phyllis gives her good wishes, there’s no harm in them, but—­but I don’t want to buy them at any price.  I’ll tell you what it is, John—­”

But she never told him at that hour, for as she spoke Harry Hatton opened the door and looked in.  “I am wet—­dripping wet, mother,” he said.  “The mizzling rain turned to a downpour when I was halfway up the hill, but I will be ready for dinner in twenty minutes.”

“And I am not going to keep beef and pudding on the table twenty minutes for you, Harry.”

“That’s right, mother.  I don’t deserve it.  Send it to the kitchen.  I’ll have some partridge and pastry when I come down.”

He was gone before his mother’s answer could leave her lips; but there was a light in her eyes and a tone in her voice that made her a different woman as she said, “We will not talk of Miss Lugur tonight, John.  There is plenty else to talk about.  She is non-essential, and I believe in the man who said, ‘Skip the non-essentials.’”

This proposal was carried out with all John’s wisdom and kindness.  He kept the conversation on the mill or on subjects relating to Harry’s proposed journey until there was a sudden silence which for a moment or two no one appeared able to break.  It was Mrs. Hatton who did so, and with a woman’s instinct she plunged at once into a subject too sacred to dispute.

“My dear Harry,” she said, in her clear vibrant voice, “my dear lad, John and I have just been talking of Wesley and how he came to light our hearthstone.  You see, poor Squire Yates’ fire went out last night.”

“Never!  Surely never, mother!”

“It did, my dear.  Yates has no son, he is old and forgetful, and his nephew, who is only a Ramsby, was at Thornton market race, and nobody thought of the fire, and so out it went.  They do say the squire is dying today.  Well, then, Hatton Hall has two sons to guard her hearth, and I want to tell you, Harry, how our fire was saved not thirty years ago.  Your grandfather was then growing poor and poorer every year, and with a heavy heart he was think, think, thinking of some plan to save the dear old home.

“One morning your father was walking round the Woodleigh meadows, for he thought if we sold them, and the Woodleigh house, we might put off further trouble for a while and give Good Fortune time to turn round and find a way to help us.  And as he was walking and thinking Ezra Topham met him.  Now, then, Ezra and your father were chief friends, even from their boyhood, and their fathers before them good friends, and indeed, as you know the Yorkshire way in friendship, it might go back of that and that again.  And Ezra said these very words,