es to a clown! It
looks as if it hadn't been touched for a century!"

Mr Farrell lowered his eyelids and sat in a grim silence, while the
clock ticked a full two minutes. Mollie, watching his face, saw the
thin lips grow thinner and thinner, as they were pressed the more firmly
together; the horizontal lines in his forehead deepened into furrows.
There was no mistaking the fact that he was displeased, and deeply
displeased, even before the cold eyes met hers once more.

"I had no intention now, or at any other time, of allowing you to assume
control over the whole parish! My proposition referred simply to this
house and your own entertainment. I am still capable of looking after
my own property."

"But--" began Mollie, and stopped short.

Even her courage failed before the obvious retort that the property was
not looked after, but allowed to fall into dilapidation; but Mr Farrell
understood without the need of words, and his eyes flashed with anger.

"You must permit me to judge for myself! When my day is over, whoever
comes into possession can squander my money as he or she sees fit, but I
cannot hurry the time forward, however much you may desire it. You must
be patient and wait. It may come sooner than you think."

Mollie sprang to her feet with an exclamation of mingled pain and anger.

"Oh, Uncle Bernard, how cruel! How can you say anything so horrid and
unjust! It isn't true, and you know it isn't true, and I don't deserve
it! I only asked for what you yourself suggested."

"I never suggested that you should interfere with my property, and
criticise what I had chosen to do or left undone. As for not deserving
reproach, you must have made very sure of stepping into my shoes since
you wish to wear them while I am still here. No doubt I appear to you a
mere cumberer of the ground; but it is my ground, I would have you
remember. You cannot take liberties with it yet awhile."

"I don't want it! I never want it! I'll go home to-morrow! You have
no right to taunt me like this!" cried Mollie, trembling with such a
storm of indignation and wounded feeling as she had rarely known in her
bright, easy-going existence.

A rush of ugly words came to her lips, and struggled for utterance,
while Mr Farrell sank back in his chair, and lay crouched against the
cushions, one thin hand pressed heavily over his heart. The look, the
action, brought Mollie to herself with a stab of recollection.

Whatever he