"Yes; I suppose you don't expect me not to know where that black mud came from on your petticoat last night," remarked she, sententiously. "Anyhow, I'd advise you to mend your frock, for the squire's in the parlor, and your mother won't be pleased."
"The squire!" cried I. "Is he going to stay to dinner?"
"Not as I know of," answered the old woman. "But you had better go and see. Joyce let him in, for I hadn't a clean apron, and I heard him say that he had come to see the master on business."
"Well, so I suppose he did," answered I.
Deborah smiled, a superior sort of smile. She did not say anything, but I knew very well what she meant. She was the only person in the house who openly insisted that the squire came to the Grange after Joyce. Mother may have thought it; I guessed from many little signs that she did think it, but she never directly spoke of it. But Deborah spoke of it, and spoke of it frankly.
It irritated me. I pushed past her roughly to reach the front parlor windows. I wanted to see the squire to-day, for I wanted to find out whether our new friend was staying at the Manor.
"You're never going in like that?" cried she.
"Certainly," replied I. "What's good enough for other folk is good enough for the squire. The squire is nothing to me, nothing at all."
"That's true enough," laughed Deborah. "I don't know as he is anything to you. But he may be something to other folk all the same. And look here, Miss Spitfire, there may come a day, for all your silly airs, when you may be glad enough that the squire is something to some of you, and when you'd be very sorry if you'd done anything to prevent it. You go and think that over."