‘They keep such a heap of company, my dear, and when they’re not tearing over the country on horseback, they’re playing cards all day. James Powell, the under footman, says it’s something awful--like hell opened, was his words. They begin the first thing after breakfast, and then it’s gambling and swearing, and brandies and sodas, till night. My lady seems to think nothing of it. She has a lot of brothers, and I suppose she was brought up amongst it all. She drives a tandem, and has nearly killed several people by her fast driving--she _did_ run over Betsy Rigden’s little girl one day; but it wasn’t much hurt, and Sir Archibald sent Betsy a ten-pound note, so nothing more was said about it; but, to my mind, it isn’t decent that just as sober people are on their way to church, my lady should come tearing down the road in her tandem, with some young gentleman by her side, and both laughing so loud you might hear them half a mile off. Ah, it’s a very different house to what it used to be.’ ‘But they’re not at home now, you say.’ ‘No, my lass, nor won’t be till October or thereabouts, and then they will keep it up till it’s time to go back to London, or off to some of those foreign places Sir Archibald is so fond of, and where, I hear, they do nothing but gamble. It’s a dreadful habit for them to have got into. I never thought at one time that I should have lived to see Sir Archibald the worse for liquor, but I’m sorry to say I have, more than once. However, as I said before, he’s been a good landlord to father there, so we’re the last as should speak against him. He fills my two rooms every autumn, and far into spring; and if I had six I could let them to him. Last year he came to ask me to let him have the whole farmhouse, and find beds for ourselves elsewhere, and he would have made it worth our while to, but I told him it couldn’t be. I couldn’t sleep away from my dairy and bakehouse; nothing would go right if I wasn’t on the spot.’ ‘Do you go to church still, mother, or to chapel?’ asked her daughter. ‘Why, to church, Nell, of course. What makes you think we should change our religion? You go to church too, I hope?’ Nell waived the question. ‘Only because of Hugh Owen,’ she said. ‘You spoke so well of his preaching, that I thought you might have gone over to the Dissenters.’ ‘No, no, my lass. No going over for us. Father and I were born and bred church people, and we’ll be buried as such, eh, father?’ ‘Why, certainly,’ replied the farmer. ‘I never hold with chopping and changing. Live as you’ve been bred. That’s my motto.’