‘Mother,’ said Nell presently, ‘I have something to tell you. I saw Lady Ilfracombe in the fields this afternoon, and she said that she and the earl intended to call here to-morrow morning. They are going to leave Usk Hall to-morrow afternoon, and so I daresay they will take this opportunity to tell father about the farm. You mustn’t go out to-morrow, father, till you have seen him.’ ‘_I_ go out,’ exclaimed the farmer, ‘on such an occasion? I should think not. Why no one in the house shall stir till they’re come and gone. Has the parlour been swept to-day, for if not you and mother will have to stay up till it’s done? I couldn’t have his lordship sitting down in a dusty room. That wouldn’t be the way to make him think us good tenants.’ ‘A dusty room,’ cried the old woman indignantly. ‘We’ve been man and wife now for five-and-twenty years come Michaelmas, Griffith Llewellyn, and you can’t name the day you’ve ever seen my parlour dusty yet. The Queen herself, God bless her, might enter it any day in the week and not soil her royal robes.’ ‘Well, well, wife, there’s enough words about that,’ said her husband. ‘I’m proud to hear his lordship’s coming to Panty-cuckoo, and glad that Nell gave us warning of it. Did you find an opportunity to ask if there’s a chance of your entering the earl’s service again, my girl?’ he continued to his daughter. Nell left her seat and approached her father’s side, winding her arm round the old man’s neck, and laying her cheek gently against his. ‘No, dear father,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mention the subject. I don’t think I shall ever go to service again, dear. I am not so strong as I was, and it would be too hard for me.’ She strangled a kind of sob in her throat as she proceeded:-- ‘I have been a great burden on you for the last year, father; but I won’t be so much longer. If I can’t go to service, I will provide for myself some way, don’t fear that.’ ‘Ay, my lass, it will be as well. You’re a bonny lass, there’s no denying, but you don’t seem to care much for marriage, and when your mother and me is gone you’ll have a sore shift to provide for yourself if you have no work to do. I mentioned his lordship’s service because it seems to me as if it has left you pretty well unfit for anything else. Your hands and face and your constitootion ain’t fit for a farm-house, Nell, and that’s the truth. They improved you and they spiled you both up in London. You’re fitter for the town than the country, any one could see that with half an eye. But you’re a good girl, my dear, and mother and me, we both say that.’ ‘Thank you, father,’ she replied, as she kissed him several times, more times than were necessary, according to the rough old farmer’s ideas--and then did the same by her mother. ‘Good-night, dear, dear mother,’ she murmured fervently. ‘You’ve been a good mother to your poor, thoughtless, useless Nell.’