She shrugged her shoulders—­an odd gesture for a rustic coquette—­while a frown overshadowed her features.

“They’re all alike,” she retorted scornfully.  “If you go over to the mill you’ll probably find Abel Revercomb sulking and brow-beating his mother because I smiled at you this afternoon.  And I did it only to plague him!”

“Molly’s a good girl,” said Reuben, rather as if he expected the assertion to be disputed, “but she was taught to despise folks when she was a baby—­wasn’t you, pretty?”

“Not you—­never you, grandfather.”

The intimate nature of the conversation grated upon Gay not a little.  There was something splendidly barbaric about the girl, and yet the mixture of her childishness and her cynicism affected him unpleasantly rather than otherwise.  His ideal woman—­the woman of the early Victorian period—­was submissive and clinging.  He was perfectly assured that she would have borne her wrongs, and even her mother’s wrongs, with humility.  Meekness had always seemed to him the becoming mental and facial expression for the sex; and that a woman should resent appeared almost as indelicate as that she should propose.

When supper was over, and Reuben had settled to his pipe, with the old hound at his feet, Molly took down a bunch of keys from a nail in the wall, and lit a lantern with a taper which she selected from a china vase on the mantelpiece.  Once outside she walked a little ahead of Gay and the yellow blaze of the lantern flitted like a luminous bird over the flagged walk bordered by gooseberry bushes.  Between the stones, which were hollowed by the tread of generations, nature had embroidered the bare places with delicate patterns of moss.

At the kitchen the girl stopped to summon Patsey, the maid, who was discovered roasting an apple at the end of a long string before the logs.

“I am going to the big house.  Come and make up the bed in the blue room,” Gay heard through the door.

“Yes’m, Miss Molly, I’se a-comin’ in jes a minute.”

“And bring plenty of lightwood.  He will probably want a fire.”

With this she appeared again on the outside, crossed the paved square to the house, and selecting a large key, unlocked the door, which grated on its hinges as Gay pushed it open.  Following her into the hall, he stood back while she lit a row of tallow candles, in old silver sconces, which extended up the broad mahogany staircase to the upper landing.  One by one as she applied the taper, the candles flashed out in a misty circle, and then rising in a clear flame, shone on her upraised hand and on the brilliant red of her lips and cheeks.

“That is your mother’s room,” she said, pointing to a closed door, “and this is yours.  Patsey will make a fire.”

“It’s rather gloomy, isn’t it?”

“Shall I bring you wine?  I have the key to the cellar.”

“Brandy, if you please.  The place feels as if it had been shut up for a century.”