“Then you shall have both, to make sure, and plenty of them too,” replied Mr. Palethorpe. “If long scores are ever to be cleared off, we should begin to pay 'em betimes; and I have a score chalked on for you that will want interest before it is discharged, I know. Mark, you will have this every morning regularly if you are not down stairs as the clock strikes six, neither sooner nor later. If you get up too soon, I shall lay on you just the same as if you got up too late,--for a right hour is a right hour, and six exactly is our time. I 'll make you feel where your mistake was, my boy, when you thought of coming mester here! There's last night's job I owe you for yet, and a good price you shall pay for it, or else I don't know how to reckon.” A blow on the right ear, and another on the left, immediately after, in order to keep his head in the middle, fell to Colin's lot at the conclusion of this harangue; and a push at the back of the neck which followed directly, enabled him to get out of the room somewhat more speedily than he would have done without that assistance. But to all this--though taken much in dudgeon--being mildness itself as compared with what might have been expected, Colin submitted in a sturdy mood, and without saying anything; though he did not forget to promise himself at some future day to adjust the balances between them. In consequence of the lack-a-daisical turn which Miss Sowersoft's interview with Mr. Palethorpe had taken on the preceding night, that lady denied to the household the pleasure of her company at breakfast, as she could not meet the ungrateful farm-servant before company again until an explanation in private had taken place. Poor old George, all benignity, and looking like an elder of some by-gone age, seemed more than usually anxious to promote good feeling amongst his fellows, and to restore the harmony which had been destroyed the evening before, on his account. But Palethorpe was unforgiving, and Abel unrepentant: so that, whatever might be the disposition of others, those two characters at least regarded each other over the table much in the same manner as, it might be supposed, two of Mr. Wombwell's beasts, placed on opposite sides of his menagerie, would do when they address each other before a meal-time in that language of the eyes of which poets speak, and seem to intimate a very unequivocal desire to dine upon one another.