'This young lady's lost her way,' Reddin remarked.
'She 'as, God's truth! But you'll find it forra I make no doubt, sir. "There's a way"' (he looked ironically at the poultry-basket behind the trap, from which peered anxious, beaky faces)—'"a way as no fowl knoweth, the way of a man with a maid."'
'Fetch the brood mares in from the lower pasture. They should have been in this hour.'
'And late love's worse than lad's love, so they do say,' concluded
Vessons.
'There's nothing of love between us,' Reddin snapped.
'I dunna wonder at it!' Andrew cast an appraising look at his master's flushed face and at Hazel's tousled hair, and withdrew.
Hazel went into the elaborately carved porch. She looked round the brown hall where deep shadows lurked. Oak chests and carved chairs, all more or less dusty, stood about, looking as if disorderly feasters had just left them. In one corner was an inlaid sideboard piano.
Hazel did not notice the grey dust and the hearth full of matches and cigarette ends. She only saw what seemed to her fabulous splendour. A foxhound rose from the moth-eaten leopard-skin by the hearth as they came in. Hazel stiffened.
'I canna-d-abear the hound-dogs,' she said. 'Nasty snabbing things.'
'Best dogs going.'