CHAPTER VI
THICKER THAN WATER
Now I do not deny that I was frightened out of my life by the sudden appearing of the Golden Farmer. But it was different with Elsie. Perhaps it ran in the blood. For, though most people in Breckonside were feared of my father and his long arm, I am not—no, nor ever could be. And so, in that moment of panic, it was given to Elsie to be able to speak serenely to her grandfather.
Yet I could see that the little man was all in a fume of anger, and kept it badly down, too.
"What are the two of you doing here?" he cried, dancing about and shaking his stick at us. "Where do you belong, and what ill purpose fetched ye to Deep Moat Grange?"
"One question at a time," said Elsie, standing quietly before him, with one thumb tucked in a leather strap about her waist. "'Who are we?' say you. I will tell you, grandfather——"
"Grandfather——!"
You should have seen the little wizened man jump at the word.
"Grandfather!" he repeated in a kind of skirl, or scream, as of a bagpipe. "Ye are no blood kin of mine—-!"
"Am I no?" said Elsie. "I am Bell Stennis's daughter, and a daughter, too, of one Ensign Stennis, a British officer——"