“There’s no order in this house, nor ever was,” he said, in a strong North country accent. Then he crossed the room again and threw himself into the big chair. The house was solidly built, and the parlour was on the ground floor; nevertheless, his step made the floor jar and creak as if it had found loose boards under the carpet, and shook the room as though it had been in a slim villa. The big chair creaked too as he threw himself into it. All other sounds had ceased as by magic, even the click of Joan’s needles, which only occurred at long intervals, though she worked on with more devotion than ever. Even the coals made no further explosions, sent out no little gay jets of gas, but burned soberly, stolidly under the master’s eye. Mrs. Joscelyn, in her agitation, was less silent. Her elbow knocked against the table, her needle stumbled and broke in her work, her reels of thread fell down and rolled about the carpet. All this the master contemplated with his keen spectator-eyes. He had altogether changed the character of the scene. The two very distinctly marked individuals, so unlike in nature, though so closely bound together, who had put forth unawares each her own phase of life in the household quiet, were now cowed into a sort of composed and alarmed opposition, dumbly resistant, making common cause together; typical women merely, not individuals at all. The typical domestic tyrant who had worked this change looked round him with a glance in which contempt for them and a kind of pleasure in their subjugation were mingled with resentment against them for the distrust and sudden silence which he knew his appearance had produced. He crossed his long legs half way across the hearth, thrusting up his heavy boot almost in his daughter’s face. Many men do this who mean no particular harm, but Joscelyn did mean harm, and did not care who knew it. In a moment the room had become full of him, and of his oppressive shadow. He took away and devoured, drawing into his capacious gullet, the very air they breathed. “You are a nice cheerful lot for a man to come in to,” he said; “a nice pleasant home you make for me, with that click-clack. I don’t wonder, not I, that men turn out to the ale-house, though I’ve got to punish ’em for it now and again. No, I don’t wonder, not a bit. A couple of white-faced women filling up his rooms, taking the heat out of his fire and the light out of his lamp for their confounded stockings and rubbish--when there isn’t an old woman in the dale but could do them a sight better and save all that pretence.” Joan upon this raised her eyes. She was not timid, though she avoided strife.