"Well, you can go to the kitchen."
"Yes'm."
"I must keep an eye on that girl," thought Mrs. Kinloch. "She is easily persuaded, fickle, without strong sense, and with only a very shallow kind of cunning. She might do mischief. What can Squire Clamp want? The old hovel her grandmother lives in isn't worth fifty dollars. Whatever has been going on, I'm glad Hugh is not mixed up in it."
Just then Hugh rode up, and, tying his horse, came in. He seemed to have lost something of the gayety of the morning. "I am tired," he said. "I had to get off and lead the pony down the hill, and it's steep and stony enough."
"There are pleasant roads enough in the neighborhood," said his mother, "without your being obliged to take to the woods and clamber over the mountains."
"I know it," he replied; "but I had been up towards the Allen place, and I took a notion to come back over the hill."
"Then you passed Lucy's house?"
"Yes. The bridle-path leads down the hill about a mile above this; but on foot one may keep along the ridge and come down into the valley through our garden."
"So I suppose; in fact, I believe Lucy has just returned that way."
"Indeed! it's strange I didn't see her."