‘Ye be wonderful like your mother, Richard,’ he said, and sighed again, and groaned, and took another sip of punch, blinking the while, partly from the strength of the decoction and partly because he was overcome by emotion. Richard, sitting opposite to him, stretched out his legs luxuriously to the warmth of the crackling wood fire, and, removing his pipe from his lips, gazed contentedly round the familiar kitchen, which was now looking its best in the homely radiance. ‘It is good to come back to the dear old place and to find everything exactly the same as ever. You don’t seem to have grown a day older, Uncle Isaac—nothing is changed. I can’t tell you how delightful that is. I had been tormenting myself during the journey with fancying I should find things altered—but, thank Heaven, they are not.’ He glanced brightly at the broad, rubicund face opposite to him, and took his glass from the table. ‘Your health, Uncle! May you live a thousand years, and may you be the same at the end of them!’ He half emptied his glass, and set it down with a cheery laugh. Isaac drank slowly from his, peering meanwhile at his nephew over the rim. ‘Thank you, my lad,’ he said, replacing it on the table at last. ‘I’m obliged to you, Richard. ’T is kindly meant, but changes, d’ ye see’—here he paused and coughed—‘changes, Richard, is what must be looked for in this here world.’ His colour, always sufficiently ruddy, was now so much heightened, and his face assumed so curiously solemn an expression, that Richard paused with his pipe half-way to his lips and stared at him with amazement and gathering alarm. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said, anxiously. ‘Are n’t you feeling well? You’re looking first-rate.’ ‘Never felt better in my life,’ rejoined his uncle in sepulchral tones. ‘Come, that’s all right! You quite frightened me. What do you mean by talking about changes?’ Isaac took a gulp from his tumbler and fixed his round eyes dismally on the young man. ‘There may be sich things as changes for the better,’ he remarked, still in his deepest bass. ‘Don’t believe in ’em,’ cried Richard gaily. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to turn Methody, or Salvationist, or anything of that kind. I like you as you are—and I don’t want you to be any better.’ ‘Dear heart alive, what notions the chap d’ take in his head!’ ejaculated the farmer, relaxing into a smile. ‘Nay now, I never thought on sich things; but there’ll be a change in this here house for all that, Richard. I be a-goin’’—here Isaac leaned forward, with a hand on either knee, and fixed his eyes earnestly, almost tragically, on his nephew—‘I be a-goin’, Richard, for to change my state.’ He slowly resumed an upright position, drawing in his breath through dilated nostrils. ‘I be a-goin’, Richard,’ he continued, observing the other’s blank and uncomprehending stare—‘I be a-goin’ to get married.’