hance for all the world like a stuckey image night
after night. Your bag come by the carrier all right yesterday. And
now you must want your tea after that long walk--but, good gracious me,
boy, have you met with an accident, or what, that you're all over with
mud like that? You aren't hurted, are you?"

Eloquent again explained his mishap, but he said nothing about Mary
Ffolliot. His aunt took him to the back-door and brushed him
vigorously, then they both sat down to tea in her exceedingly cosy
sitting-room.

"Do you like being back here again after all these years, Aunt Susan?"
asked Eloquent. "I suppose everything has changed very much since you
lived here before."

"Not so much as you'd think; and then the _place_ is the same, and as
one grows older that counts for a lot. When one's young, one's all for
change and gallivantin', but once you're up in years 'tis the old
things you cares for most; 'an when I heard as the house I was born in
was empty I just had to come back. Redmarley village don't change,
because no one can build. Mr Ffolliot sees to that; not one rood of
land will he sell, and the old houses looks just the same as when I was
a little girl. Your father he left Redmarley when he was fourteen, and
went 'prentice to the 'Golden Anchor,' an' he never cared for the
village like me. I hardly knew him when I was young, he being twelve
years older than me, and him coming home but seldom."

"It must make a good deal of difference having a family at . . . the
Manor," said Eloquent, with studied carelessness. He had nearly said
"the Manshun," after the fashion of the villagers.

"Of course it do. There's changes there, if you like."

"I suppose you sometimes see . . . the young people?"

"See them? I should just think we do, _and_ hear them and hear _about_
them from morning to night. There never was more mixable children than
the young Ffolliots."

"How many are there?" Eloquent tried to keep his voice cool and
uninterested, but he felt as he used to feel when he was a child in
"hiding games," when some one told him he was "getting warm."

"Well, there's Mr Grantly, he's the eldest; he's going to be an officer
in the army like his grandpa; he's gone apprentice to some shop."

"What?" asked Eloquent, in astonishment.

"I thought it a bit queer myself, but Miss Mary herself did say it.
'Grantly's gone to the shop,' she said, 'to learn to be a soldier'; and
I said, 'Well, the gentry's