adjusted a bandage, and went out into the
yard.

Billy accompanied her, for he always passed his Sunday afternoons with
his mistress.

As she left the stable Monkey Brand was entering the yard.

"What was Joses saying, Brand?" she asked sharply.

The little man did not seem to see or hear her. But as he passed her,
she thought he dropped an eyelid. Then he limped swiftly on into the
saddle-room.

Boy, balancing on the ladder, looked after him.

Then she went up into the loft, Billy Bluff at her heels trying with
whimpers to thrust by that he might hold communion with fair Maudie on
the top rung.

Maudie watched the approaching feet with sullen and apathetic disdain.
When they were almost on her she rose suddenly. The languid lady with
the manners of a West-End drawing-room became the screaming fish-wife of
Wapping. She humped, swore, and scampered away to the loft, there to
establish herself upon a cross-beam, where she was proof against
assault.

Boy crossed the loft, entered her room, and closed the door.

She glanced out of the window.

Joses was crossing the Paddock Close toward the cottage where he lodged.

She watched him closely.

He was going to try it on. She was sure of it.

Then she would try it on him; and she would show no mercy.

She looked at herself in the glass, and smiled at what she saw.

Mr. Silver's affront still clouded her face, and the thought of Joses
struck from the cloud a flash of lightning.

Suddenly an idea came to her. Her eyes sparkled, and she laughed
merrily.

She let down her hair.

It was short, fine, and thick; massy, Mr. Haggard called it. Then she
took a pair of scissors and began to snip. Flakes of gold fell on the
floor and strewed her feet. She stood as on a threshing-floor.

As she worked, the boards of the loft sounded to the tramp of a heavy
visitor.

Somebody knocked at the door. There came to the girl's eyes a look of
amused defiance.

"Come in," she said, turning.

Mrs. Woodburn stood in the door, grieved and grim. She saw her
daughter's face framed in thickets of gold, and the splendid ruin on the
floor.

Boy crossed to her mother and closed the door quietly behind her. Then
she led her mother to the bed, and sat down beside her.

The old lady was breathing deeply, and not from the effort of the climb.

The daughter's eyes, full of a tender curiosity, teasing and yet
compassionate, searched her mother's face, in which there was no
laught