"Well, little maid, are you a suffragette? Or a policeman? What do you want?"
Harebell was nothing if not direct.
"I want you to stop to listen to me. Tom Triggs is a very good man, and a friend of mine, and he can make beautiful rocking-chairs fit for a queen. Please take him as your carpenter and give him a cottage."
"Upon my word! Tom Triggs! Who is he? Surely not that drunken loafer who spends his days over his beer-pot!"
"Oh, that was long, long ago; he's quite a changed man; everybody says so. At least, he's really the same, only much, much nicer."
"I know him," said one of the Squire's companions. "He's doing up the house I'm buying. Tom Triggs—I know the chap. He isn't a bad workman. My foreman of works says he's the most dependable of the whole lot out there."
The Squire looked down upon Harebell with laughing eyes.
"Now may I ask why you and he have chummed up together? An odd companion for you, I should say."
Harebell looked up with big earnest eyes.
"I liked him when he was wicked, because I'd never seen a wicked man before. And then—well, you know I've been trying to get him to do things, and he's done them all except a cottage and a wife. I could get the wife if you would give the cottage."