“Well, Ailie, child,” says she, “come along in, don’t sit there on your horse. Who’s this you’ve got with you? Oh! it’s you, Dick, is it? My eyes ain’t as good as they were. Well, come along in, too. You’re on the wrong road, and worse’ll come of it. But come along in, I’m not going to be the one to hunt you. I remember old times when you were a little toddling chap, as bold as a lion, and no one dreamt you’d grow up to be the wild chap you are. Gracey’s inside, I think. She’s as big a fool about ye as ever.”

I very near broke down at this. I could stand hard usage, and send back as good as I got; but this good old woman, that had no call to think anything of me, but that I had spoiled her daughter’s chance of marrying well and respectably—when she talked to me this way, I came close up to making a fool of myself.

We walked in. Gracey was sewing away in the little parlour, where there always used to be a nosegay when I was a boy, and it was that clean and neat I was afraid to go into it, and never easy till I got out again. There she sat as sober-looking and steady as if she’d been there for five years, and meant to be for five years more. She wasn’t thinking of anybody coming, but when she looked up and saw me her face changed all of a sudden, and she jumped up and dropped her work on the floor.

“Why, whatever brings you here, Dick?” she said. “Don’t you know it’s terribly dangerous? Sir Ferdinand is always about here now. He stayed at George’s new house last night. Wasn’t he at Rocky Flat to-day?”

“Yes, but he won’t be back for a week. He told Aileen here he wouldn’t.” Here I looked at them both.

“Aileen’s carrying on quite a flirtation with Sir Ferdinand,” says Gracey. “I don’t know what someone else would say if he saw every thing.”

“Doesn’t he talk to anyone when he comes here, or make himself pleasant?” I said. “Perhaps there’s more than one in the game.”

“Perhaps there is,” says Gracey; “but he thinks, I believe, that he can get something out of us girls about you and your goings on, and where you plant; and we think we’re quite as clever as he is, and might learn something useful, too. So that’s how the matter lies at present. Are you going to be jealous?”

“Not a bit in the world,” I said, “even if I had the right. I’ll back you two, as simple as you look, against any inspector of police from here to South Australia.”