Page:Mistress Madcap Surrenders (1926).pdf/72

 stern tread, or, mounting abruptly, have ridden away so furiously into the twilight!

As for Mehitable, tremulously returning Mistress Lindsley's greeting and straining her ears to hear the last of those retreating hoof-beats, she was filled with a mixture of feelings and hardly knew what she was saying. Her relief was proportionate when, bidding farewell to John Condit, who left then, Mistress Lindsley caught up a candle which had been sputtering upon a table behind her and led the way through a dark hall and a series of small, ill-planned rooms into a big, bright kitchen, full of goodly odors, warm with firelight, and reassuring with its promise of supper upon a long, candle-lit table in the center of the room. Mehitable found, then, given a few precious seconds to regain her self-possession, she could enter the kitchen her own smiling, debonaire self.

"Well," said Mistress Lindsley, "your cousin will indeed be glad to see ye! Poor thing, she hath been much alone, so busy are we wi' the baking we must do for His Excellency, who hath now arrived at the headquarters."

"Do ye indeed bake His Excellency's bread?" asked Mehitable, with a sort of awe in her voice.

Mistress Lindsley laughed as she motioned to her young guests to remove their capes and mittens and tippets and advance to the fire. "I do hate to disappoint ye first thing," she replied dryly,