The girl's voice trembled, but she threw back her slender neck with a gesture that became her. The door, which had been closed, stealthily opened. Hubert Mason's face appeared in the doorway. It was gazing eagerly—admiringly—at Miss Fountain.
Mrs. Mason did not see him. Nor was she daunted by Laura's anger.
"It's aw yan," she said stubbornly. "Thoo ha' made a covenant wi' the Amorite an the Amalekite. They ha' called tha, an thoo art eatin o' their sacrifices!"
There was an uneasy laugh from the door, and Laura, turning her astonished eyes in that direction, perceived Hubert standing in the doorway, and behind him another head thrust eagerly forward—the head of a young woman in a much betrimmed Sunday hat.
"I say, mother, let her be, wil tha?" said a hearty voice; and, pushing Hubert aside, the owner of the hat entered the room. She went up to Laura, and gave her a loud kiss.
"I'm Polly—Polly Mason. An I know who you are weel enough. Doan't you pay ony attention to mother. That's her way. Hubert an I take it very kind of you to come and see us."
"Mother's rats on Amorites!" said Hubert, grinning.
"Rats?—Amorites?"—said Laura, looking piteously at Polly, whose hand she held.
Polly laughed, a bouncing, good-humoured laugh. She herself was a bouncing, good-humoured person, the apparent antithesis of her mother with her lively eyes, her frizzled hair, her high cheek-bones touched with a bright pink.
"Yo'll have to get oop early to understan' them two," she declared. "Mother's allus talkin out o' t' Bible, an Hubert picks up a lot o' low words out o' Whinthrupp streets—an there 'tis. But now look here—yo'll stay an tak' a bit o' dinner with us?"
"I don't want to be in your way," said Laura formally. Really, she had some difficulty to control the quiver of her lips, though it would have been difficult to say whether laughter or tears came nearest.
At this Polly broke out in voluble protestations, investigating her cousin's dress all the time, fingering her little watch-chain, and even taking up a corner of the pretty cloth jacket that she might examine the quality of it. Laura, however, looked at Mrs. Mason.
"If Cousin Elizabeth wishes me to stay," she said proudly.
Polly burst into another loud laugh.
"Yo see, it goes agen mother to be shakin hands wi' yan that's livin wi' Papists—and Misther Helbeck by the bargain. So wheniver mother talks aboot Amorites or Jesubites, or any o' thattens, she nobbut means Papist—Romanists as our minister coes 'em. He's every bit as bad as her. He would as lief shake hands wi' Mr. Helbeck as wi' the owd 'un!"
"I'll uphowd ye—Mr. Bayley hasn't preached a sermon this ten year wi'oot chivvyin Papists!" said Hubert from the door. "An yo'll not find yan o' them in his parish if yo were to hunt it wi' a lantern for a week o' Sundays. When I was a lad I thowt Romanists were a soart o' varmin. I awmost looked to see 'em nailed to t' barndoor, same as stöats!"
"But how strange!" cried Laura—"when there are so few Catholics about here. And no one hates Catholics now. One may just—despise them."
She looked from mother to son in bewilderment. Not only Hubert's speech, but his whole manner had broadened and coarsened since his mother's arrival.
"Well, if there isn't mony, they make a deal o' talk," said Polly—"onyways sence Mr. Helbeck came to t' hall.—Mother, I'll take Miss Fountain oopstairs, to get her hat off."
During all the banter of her son and daughter Mrs. Mason had sat in a disdainful silence, turning her strange eyes—the eyes of a fanatic, in a singularly shrewd and capable face—now on Laura, now on her children. Laura looked at her again, irresolute whether to go or stay. Then an impulse seized her which astonished herself. For it was an impulse of liking, an impulse of kinship; and as she quickly crossed the room to Mrs. Mason's side, she said in a pretty pleading voice:
"But you see, Cousin Elizabeth, I'm not a Catholic—and papa wasn't a Catholic. And I couldn't help Mrs. Fountain going back to her old religion—you shouldn't visit it on me!"
Mrs. Mason looked up.
"Why art tha not at church on t' Lord's day?"
The question came stern and quick.
Laura wavered, then drew herself up.
"Because I'm not your sort either. I don't believe in your church, or your ministers. Father didn't, and I'm like him."
Her voice had grown thick, and she was quite pale. The old woman stared at her.
"Then yo're nobbut yan o' the heathen!" she said with slow precision.
"I dare say!" cried Laura, half laughing, half crying. "That's my affair. But I declare I think I hate Catholics as much as you—there, Cousin Elizabeth! I don't hate my stepmother, of course. I promised father to take care of her. But that's another matter."
"Dost tha hate Alan Helbeck?" said Mrs. Mason suddenly, her black eyes opening in a flash.
The girl hesitated, caught her breath—then was seized with the strangest, most abject desire to propitiate this grim woman with the passionate look.
"Yes!" she said wildly. "No, no!—that's silly. I haven't had time to hate him. But I don't like him, anyway. I'm nearly sure I shall hate him!"
There was no mistaking the truth in her tone.
Mrs. Mason slowly rose. Her chest heaved with one long breath, then subsided; her brow tightened. She turned to her son.
"Art tha goin to let Daffady do all thy work for tha?" she said sharply. "Has t' roan calf bin looked to?"
"Aye—I'm going," said Hubert evasively, and sheepishly straightening himself he made for the front door, throwing back more than one look as he departed at his new cousin.
"And you really want me to stay?" repeated Laura insistently, addressing Mrs. Mason.
"Yo're welcome," was the stiff reply. "Nobbut yo'd been mair welcome if yo hadna brokken t' Sabbath to coom here. Mappen yo'll goa wi' Polly, an tak' your bonnet off."
Laura hesitated a moment longer, bit her lip, and went.
* * * * *
Polly Mason was a great talker. In the few minutes she spent with Laura upstairs, before she hurried down again to help her mother with the Sunday dinner, she asked her new cousin innumerable questions, showing an intense curiosity as to Bannisdale and the Helbecks, a burning desire to know whether Laura had any money of her own, or was still dependent upon her stepmother, and a joyous appropriative pride in Miss Fountain's gentility and good looks.
The frankness of Polly's flatteries, and the exuberance of her whole personality, ended by producing a certain stiffness in Laura. Every now and then, in the intervals of Polly's questions, when she ceased to be inquisitive and became confidential, Laura would wonder to herself. She would half shut her eyes, trying to recall the mental image of her cousins and of the farm, with which she had started that morning from Bannisdale; or she would think of her father, his modes of life and speech—was he really connected, and how, with this place and its inmates? She had expected something simple and patriarchal. She had found a family of peasants, living in a struggling, penurious way—a grim mother speaking broad dialect, a son with no pretensions to refinement or education, except perhaps through his music—and a daughter——
Laura turned an attentive eye on Polly, on her high and red cheek-bones, the extravagant fringe that vulgarised all her honest face, the Sunday dress of stone-coloured alpaca, profusely trimmed with magenta ribbons.
"I will—I will like her!" she said to herself—"I am a horrid, snobbish, fastidious little wretch."
But her spirits had sunk. When Polly left her she leant for a moment upon the sill of the open window, and looked out. Across the dirty, uneven yard, where the manure