and the attitude she took
were full of life and vivacity. His lordship was so taken aback by
the extraordinary mixture of age and girlishness she presented that he
stared for a second or two unlike a man of the world, and only recovered
himself by an effort.

"Set up the ladder here, Joseph," he said, pointing with the billhook
to indicate the place. Joseph set down the ladder on the pathway, and
leaning it across the close-clipped privet hedge where numberless small
staring eyes of white wood betrayed the recent presence of the shears,
he propped it against the stout limb of a well-pruned apple-tree. His
lordship, somewhat ostentatiously avoiding the eye of the inmate of the
cottage, tucked his saw and his billhook under his left arm and mounted
slowly, while Joseph made a great show of steadying the ladder. The
little old woman opened the garden gate with a click and slipped into
the roadway. His lordship hung his saw upon a rung of the ladder, and
leaning a little over took a grasp of the bough of a sweeping laburnum
which overhung the road.

"My lord," said a quick, thin voice, which in its blending of the
characteristics of youth and age matched strangely with the speaker's
aspect, "this tenement and its surrounding grounds are my freehold. I
cannot permit your lordship to lay a mutilating hand upon them."

"God bless my soul!" said his lordship. "That's Rachel Blythe! That must
be Rachel Blythe."

"Rachel Blythe at your lordship's service," said the little old lady.
She dropped a curt little courtesy, at once as young and as old as
everything about her, and stood looking up at him, with drooping hands
crossed upon the garden shears.

"God bless my soul! Dear me!" said his lordship. "Dear me! God bless my
soul!" He came slowly down the ladder and, surrendering his billhook
to Joseph, advanced and proffered a tremulous white hand. Miss Blythe
accepted it with a second curt little courtesy, shook it once up and
down and dropped it. "Welcome back to Heydon Hay, Miss Blythe," said
the old nobleman, with something of an air of gallantry. "You have long
deprived us of your presence."

Perhaps Miss Blythe discerned a touch of badinage in his tone, and
construed it as a mockery. She drew up her small figure in exaggerated
dignity, and made much such a motion with her head and neck as a hen
makes in walking.

"I have long been absent from Heydon Hay, my lord," she answered.
"My good man," turning upon Joseph, "you