She reached the porch, and pulled fiercely at the old-fashioned bell, then fairly jumped at the loud clanging noise that woke the silence of the quiet afternoon.
The door opened so suddenly that Hepsie was quite confused, and for the moment took the stately old butler for her grandfather himself, offered her hand, and then turned crimson.
"Good gracious me!" she said in her brisk voice. "Do you stand behind the door all day? You made me jump so that I don't know what I am saying, but—well—I must see my grandfather at once, please."
Every one in the village knew all about the child and who she was, and the man was more than surprised at seeing her dare to come there, and he also felt very nervous.
"You run away, miss," he said in a confidential whisper, "an' more's the shame I should have to say so, but, bless your heart, the master wouldn't see you, and it's more than I dare to tell him you're wanting."
"You need not trouble," Hepsie said; "if I had not made a big resolution to look after my tongue, I should say more than you would enjoy hearing—talking to a lady (who comes to visit your master on Christmas Day) like you are doing to me; not that you may not mean kindly, now I come to think of it, but meaning goes for nothing, my good man, if you do a wrong thing, and you can't tell me that you are the one to decide whom your master will see or not." She waited to take a breath, while the man rubbed his white hair in great perplexity, and feeling rather breathless himself; but Hepsie calmly walked by him, and before he could recover from the shock, he saw her disappear into the dining-room!
Hepsie never forgot that moment.
Seated at a long table was a solitary and lonely-looking figure, supporting one thin old cheek on his hand as he rested his elbow on the table and seemed to be gazing far away into space. She did not know that he was rather deaf, and had not heard her enter, and she stood and looked at him, with her heart aching in a funny sort of way, she thought, for the sake of a wicked old man.
She stared and stared, and the more she stared, the bigger a lump in her throat seemed to become. The room was so quiet and he sat so still, and something in his face brought that of her mother to her mind.
At last she walked right up to him, and, feeling if she did not get out the words quickly she never would, Hepsie stretched out her hand and said: "When I stopped you in the lane to-day, I didn't know how much mother still loved you, and I forgot all about honouring parents, however unkind they seem, or I shouldn't have told you what I did, however true it was, for I hurt mother shockingly, as any one could see, and I've promised to look after my tongue much better, and so I just rushed up here to say—what I have said—and—and—please that's all, except——"