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'Oh, I see! There's attraction over there, come to think of it. Not that I blame you. Now that I remember, you did use to kind of shine around Ada when you was a young gaffer. That's all right!'

They had risen from the table by this time, and a slow-mounting annoyance approaching anger had modified Richard Milne's haste to get away. 'That's pleasant,' he asserted. He secured his hat and went outside, to the accompaniment of the housewife's expressed wish that he remember her to Mrs. Lethen; but Carson was still beside him, hands comfortably stuck in deep overall pockets.

'Kind of looks as though I wasn't going to have you help me see to them calves after all, eh? Unless you go that way through the fields with me. Maybe I'll see you over there, anyway. Ha! Ha! But, of course, you wouldn't be coming away with me yet so early. Well, I'll see the door's left unlocked for you.'

Milne thanked him with a grave smile, as one willing to accept all this as well-intentioned jocosity, and hurried down the lane to the road. His chief feeling was one of haste.