’They had their origin in England, I believe; somebody set them on foot for the benefice of the poorer classes, or work people; and Dane has imported them.  He receives the employes of the mills,’ said Prudentia, chuckling,—­’whoever will come and pay a penny; his own workmen and the others.  The levee is held on Saturday nights; and Dane lays himself out to amuse them with reading to them and singing.  Fancy it!  Fancy Dane reading all sorts of things to those audiences! and the evenings are so interesting, I am told, that they do not disperse till eleven o’clock.  I believe he has it in contemplation to add the more material refreshment of sandwiches and coffee as soon as he gets his arrangements perfected.  And he is going to build, as soon as the spring opens, O, I don’t know what!’

‘Fools build houses, and other people live in them,’ said Mr. Falkirk.

’O, it’s not houses to live in—­though I have a notion he is going to do that too.  He lives with old Gyda pretty much of the time.’

‘Well,’ said Dr. Arthur, looking at Mr. Falkirk but speaking to Wych Hazel, ’I need only add, that my father thoroughly approves of all Rollo’s work.’

‘Work?—­does he call it “work"?’ said Wych Hazel, looking up.

’It is not exactly play, Miss Kennedy!’—­

But the soft laugh that answered that, no one could define.

‘He won’t find it play by the by,’ said Mr. Falkirk.

CHAPTER XLI.

A LESSON.

This visit and talk gave Hazel a great deal to ponder.  The work, and—­the doer of it; and—­did he ever think of her, she questioned, in the doing?  And did he expect to make her ‘stand, as he had the bay’? and come, if he but ’snapped his fingers’?  On the whole, Miss Wych did not feel as if she were developing any hidden stores of docility at present!—­not at present; and one or two new questions, or old ones in a new shape, began to fill her mind; inserting themselves between the leaves of her Schiller, peeping cunningly out from behind ‘reason’ and ‘instinct’ and ‘the wings of birds’; dancing and glimmering and hiding in the firelight.  Mr. Falkirk might have noticed, about this time, that Miss Wych was never ready to have the gas lit.

The gas was lit, however, and the tea-tray just brought in, when one evening a few nights after the visit last recorded, Rollo himself was announced.  Notwithstanding all Mrs. Coles had prognosticated, he seemed very much like himself both in face and manner; he came in and talked and took his place at the table, just as he had been used to do at Chickaree.  Not even more grave than he had often been there.

It was not the first time Wych Hazel had confessed to herself that tea trays are a great institution; nor the first time she had found shelter behind her occupation.  Very demurely she poured out the tea, and listened sedately to the talk between the gentlemen; but it was with extra gravity that she at last put her fingers in.  She never could guess afterwards how she had dared.