“I don’t wonder they were angry,” broke in George, who was the Granthams’ son and heir, and had a baby brother of whom he tried hard not to be jealous.  “Joseph wasn’t the oldest, was he?”

“No:  he was the youngest of all, except Benjamin.”

“And even if he dreamed it, he needn’t have gone about bragging.  It was bad enough, his having that coat of many colours.  I say, Miss Wesley—­you’re not a boy, of course—­but how would you feel if your father made everything of one of your brothers?”

“I wonder if he dreamed it on a Friday?” piped Rebecca.

“Why, child?”

“Because Martha says”—­Martha was the Granthams’ cook—­“that Friday’s dream on Saturday told is bound to come true before you are old.”

“We shall find out if it came true.  Go on, Miss Wesley.”

“But if it was Friday’s dream,” Rebecca persisted, “and he wanted it to come true, he couldn’t help telling it.”

“Couldn’t help being a sneak, I suppose you mean!”

A sound outside the window cut short this argument.  All glanced up:  but it came this time from no avalanche of snow.  Someone had planted a ladder against the house, and the top of the ladder was scraping against the window-sill.

“Too short by six feet,” Hetty heard a voice say, and held her breath.  The ladder was joggled a little and fixed again.  Footsteps began to ascend it.  A face and a pair of broad shoulders rose into sight over the sill.  They belonged to William Wright.

“I—­I think, dears, we had better find some other room.”

Hetty had sprung up and felt herself shaking from head to foot.  For the moment he was not looking in, but stood at the top of the ladder with his head thrown back, craning for a view of the water-trough under the eaves.

“About two feet to the right,” he called to someone below.  “No use shifting the ladder; ’twon’t reach.  Stay a minute, though—­I don’t believe ’tis a leak at all.  Here—­”

He felt the closed window with the palm of his hand, then peered through it into the room; and his eyes and Hetty’s met.

“Well, I do declare!  Good morning, miss:  ’tis like fate, the way I keep running across you.  Now would you be so kind as to lift the latch on your side and push the window gently?  The frame opens outwards and I want to steady myself by it.”

She obeyed, and was turning haughtily to follow the children when George, who loitered in the doorway watching, called out: 

“Is he coming into the room, Miss Wesley?”

She glanced over her shoulder and halted.  The man clearly did not mean to enter, but had scrambled up to the sill, and balanced himself there gripping the window-frame and leaning outwards at an angle which made her giddy.  The sill was narrow, too, and sloping.  She caught her breath, not daring to move.

He seemed to hear her, for he answered jocularly:  “’Tis to be hoped the hinges are strong—­eh, missy?—­or there’s an end of William Wright.”