The old hound, blind and toothless, fawned at his knees, and leaning over, he caressed it with a knotted and trembling hand.
"Has Spot had his supper, Molly?"
"Yes, grandfather. He can eat only soft bread and gravy." At her voice the hound groped toward her, and stooping, she laid her soft, flushed cheek on his head.
"Well, sit down, suh, sit down," said Reuben, speaking timidly as if he were not sure he had chosen the right word. "If you'll tell Delily, honey, Mr. Jonathan will have his supper."
"On condition that you let me share yours, Mr. Merryweather," insisted Gay, in his genial tone. "If you're going to make company of me, I shall go hungry until to-morrow."
From a wooden safe in the corner Molly brought a plate and a cup, and made a place for the young man at the end of the red-and-white cloth on the table. Then she turned away, without speaking, and sat down behind the tin coffeepot, which emitted a fragrant steam.
"Cream and sugar?" she inquired presently, meeting his eyes over the glass lamp which stood midway between them.
Gay had been talking to Reuben about the roads—"jolly bad roads," he called them, "wasn't it possible to make them decent for riding?" Looking up at the girl's question, he answered absently, "two lumps. Cream? Yes, please, a little," and then continued to stare at her with a vague and impersonal wonder. She was half savage, of course, with red hands, and bad manners and dressed like a boy that had got into skirts for a joke—but, by George, there was something about her that bit into the fancy. Not a beauty like his Europa of the pasture (who was, when it came to that?)—but a fascinating little beggar, with a quality of sudden surprises that he could describe by no word except "iridescent." He liked the high arch of her brows; but her nose wasn't good and her lips were too thin except when she smiled. When she smiled! It was her smile, after all, that made her seem a thing of softness and bloom born to be kissed.
Reuben ate his food rapidly, pouring his coffee into the saucer, and drinking it in loud gulps that began presently to make Gay feel decidedly nervous. Once the young man inadvertently glanced toward him, and turning away the instant afterwards, he found the girl's eyes watching him with a defiant and threatening look. Her passionate defence of Reuben reminded Gay of a nesting bird under the eye of the hunter. She did not plead, she dared—actually dared him to criticise the old man even in his thoughts!
That Molly herself was half educated and possessed some smattering of culture, it was easy to see. She was less rustic in her speech than his Europa, and there was the look of breeding, or of blood, in the fine poise of her head, in her small shapely hands, which he remembered were a distinguishing mark of the Gays.
"Mr. Mullen came for you in his cart," said Reuben, glancing from one to the other of his hearers with his gentle and humble look. "I told him you must have forgotten as you'd ridden down to the low grounds."
"No, I didn't forget," replied Molly, indifferent apparently to the restraint of Gay's presence, "I did it on purpose." Meeting the young man's amused and enquiring expression, she added defiantly, "There are plenty of girls that are always ready to go with him and it's because I'm not that he wants me."
"He's not the only one, to judge from what I heard at the ordinary."
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."
"It was your uncle's room. Do you mind sleeping here? It's the easiest to get ready."
"Not with a fire—and I may have a lamp, I suppose?"
At his question Patsey appeared with an armful of resinous pine, and a few minutes later, a cheerful blaze was chasing the shadows up the great brick chimney. When Molly returned with the brandy, Gay was leaning against the mantelpiece idly burning a bunch of dried cat-tails he had taken from a blue-and-white china vase.
"It's a gloomy old business, isn't it?" he observed, glancing from the high canopied bed with its hangings of faded damask to an engraving of the Marriage of Pocahontas between the dormer-windows. "If there are ghosts about, I suppose I'd better prepare to face them."
"Only in the west wing, the darkies say, but I think they are bats. As for those in the haunt's walk, I never believed in them. Patsey is bringing your brandy. Can I do anything else for you?"
"Only tell me," he burst out, "why in thunder the whole county hates me?"
She laughed shortly. "I can't tell you—wait and find out."
Here audacity half angered, half paralyzed him.
"What a vixen you are!" he observed presently with grudging respect.
The crimson flooded her face, and he watched her teeth gleam dangerously, as if she were bracing herself for a retort. The impulse to torment her was strong in him, and he yielded to it much as a boy might have teased a small captive animal of the woods.
"With such a temper you ought to have been an ugly woman," he said, "but you're so pretty I'm strongly inclined to kiss you."
"If you do, I'll strike you," she gasped.
The virgin in her showed fierce and passionate, not shy and fleeting. That she was by instinct savagely