“Get you up-stairs again,” shouted Klomp, with a big oath, “and don’t come down till I call you.” He sat up, his listless face full of fire. “Now, Mevrouw,” he said, “you just kindly go back to the Manor-house, please. That’s where you belong—now—and thank your stars for it. And leave poor people like us to settle our troubles between us. Pietje’s a poor, ignorant girl, and she ’ain’t got the wit to go hunting for a husband—least of all in the papers. She just took the first villain that came fooling her way.”
“But, Klomp, I had understood—” began Ursula, rising with dignity.
“No, you hadn’t, m’m; there’s just the mistake. You hadn’t understood nothing, begging your pardon. Nor, in fact, you needn’t. There isn’t anything to understand.”
He actually got up, and, shuffling across to the door, he opened it. There could be no mistaking his exceptional earnestness now.
“Well,” said Ursula, gently, preparing to depart, “when you want me, when Pietje wants me, send up to the Manor-house, and I will do whatever I can.”
He bolted the door behind her.
“Father—” began Pietje, timidly.
“Hold your tongue,” he broke in. “I don’t want to know you’re there.” And he threw himself down violently on his bench.
Ursula had nearly reached home before the meaning of Klomp’s attack recoiled upon her brain. “Looking for a husband in the papers.” Suddenly she understood. It was the old story of the trysting-place cropping up again. Not for nothing had Adeline stayed with the Klomps! Her brow mantled, and with quite unusual hauteur she acknowledged the salute of two passing laborers.