The repellent look was still on John’s face as he replied more ungraciously than before:  “Nay, I can think o’ nowt.  I can tell thee, though, that the maister’s told me to have the carriage ready to catch the train that goes east at nine” (he turned and looked at the clock on the mantel—­it was 8.15), “and, as thou sees, that’ll be in forty-five minutes.  Of course, thou knows that I shall go wi’ him.”

“Eh, but how the world will talk, and what she’ll have to bear!” broke out Mary vehemently, as she sank back on a chair almost in tears.  “And in my heart I believe that she loves him, too.  And thou must believe that, too, and yet theere thou stands wi’ that unnatural frown on thy face, and will do nowt at all, although in thy heart thou knows thou likes the missus as well as thou does the maister.”

Suddenly springing to her feet, she caught him by the sleeve, and said desperately:  “Could thou not manage, John, lad, for the maister to be just a little too late for the train?”

Without doubt John Herbert Bedford Lawson was in a most ill-conditioned mood, for instead of being moved by the palpable distress of the attractive suppliant, he turned his back ungraciously, thrust his hands viciously under his ample coat-tails, elevated his chin aggressively, and said airily, as he kept up a warlike tattoo on the carpet with one of his heels:  “John Lawson, thou art reet; it’s not the thow’t o’ thee going away that’s causing her any trouble—­thou canst go to the uttermost parts o’ the earth for all she cares, lad.”

Turning and facing her, he said grandly:  “I say once more that I know o’ nowt that can be done, Miss Mary Tiffin.”  He turned again, and this time pulled out his watch.

For a few moments Mary sat in deep thought, and then a smile broke over her face—­she had realized where her base of operations had been weak.  Banishing the smile from her lips, to find refuge in her twinkling eyes, she arose—­to vanquish Mr. Lawson.

Quietly walking up behind him she gently laid one plump hand caressingly on his shoulder.  Wondrous was the change that stole over his doughty face:  the corrugated lines on his forehead gradually vanished, his eyebrows hovered no longer belligerently near the lids, while his chin—­really a well-modelled one—­receded slowly, but surely, back to its accustomed position, revealing a very pleasant mouth indeed.  It could now be seen that the thin face of Mr. Lawson was a most kindly one.

“John,” began Mary, in a dangerously soft tone:  “I—­I think more about thy going away than thou thinks.  But thou knows how afeered I am that they’ll nivver come together again, and so—­and—­so, just only for the moment, my thoughts had gone away from thee.  And now thou knows this, lad, won’t thou make some effort to save ’em from wrecking their lives?  Maybe we can’t do much, John, but we mun try and do something.  Now, if we can prevent the maister from going away to-night, something may turn up to-morrow that’ll give ’em a chance to talk it over, and then it may come all reet between ’em once more.  As for the train, lad, if the maister should miss it” (both hands were on his shoulders now, and her comely head was very near his), “he simply couldn’t get away till to-morrow.”