“Oh,” I said, shrivelling, “it has disgusted me so that I’d hate Ma to say the wrong thing.”

“Your mother is a wonderful woman. I’ll speak to her. You’ll have to be wise and full of mercy in meeting all these situations.”

Aunt Jane was a boon as she kept Henry talking in the front garden while I plunged into preparations for dinner. Pa moved in and out of the kitchen bringing wood and filling the water cask, as a protection. During dinner I kept behind the flowers, and Henry never said a word to me, though I knew that his eyes were constantly on me.

Afterwards Ma helped me wash-up and sent Eusty to turn the horses out.

“You should have told me when Mr. Grayling first wrote to you,” she said, but not in a disciplinary tone.

“Oh, I couldn’t! You always blame me so, and I could not stand any more. Loathsome old toad, he makes me sick.” I burst into tears and hid in the pantry and left Ma to the work. She did it like a lamb.

“Come,” she said at length, “no harm has been done. The poor old man is childish, and this has overtaken him. Old men are often like that.”

“Do old women go like that too?” I asked, overcome by a horrifying possibility.

“No. Old women are never as silly as old men. When he comes again, go into my room and I’ll say you are not here for the day; and he will soon be himself again.”

Ma had never been so clement to me. She further acquiesced that I should retire without reappearing. As I lay awake I pondered another inconsistency. If old men being thus disgusting was so usual that Ma could be quite calm about it, why did men give themselves such airs about having all the brains and strength of mind? The more I thought, the more did old men seem like the God they had set up in their own image for women and children to worship.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

NOT SO EXPURGATED.

Life is not all as black as ink, even in an unliterary career. After Pa and Ma came to my help concerning Old Grayling, things took on a different aspect.

Henry went away for the winter to look after property in Queensland. I did not agree to be definitely engaged, but could not be hoity-toity seeing how I had implicated him in my misadventure. I was in hopes that he would tire of me before long. He was content to wait for three years. He said it would be safer if I looked around to see if I found anyone that I could like better than myself. If I did not he was sure that I would not find anyone whom I liked better than himself. “I don’t want you to buy a pig in a poke,” he said and laughed. It was nice of him to ease up on the Harold Beecham and Five-Bob Downs embarrassment.