She was disconcerted; she did not know what to make of this young man with the Rothwell features, who was not gratified by a respectful allusion to the family. "A good deal better!" Well, of course, the Rothwells held themselves very high, and thought other people were just the dirt under their feet. There was no pleasing them with anything you sent in, nothing was good enough, and they expected you to stand curtseying and curtseying for their custom, and to wait for your money till all the profit was gone. Mr. Hayes paid as soon as the bill was sent in, and Miss Strange was a pleasant-spoken young lady. "A good deal better"--well, no doubt it was. And yet the good woman had not been insincere when she spoke of the old times with a regretful accent in her voice. She remembered John Rothwell's father as a middle-aged gentleman, alert and strong. Those old times were the times when she was a rosy-cheeked girl, whom Simmonds came courting at her father the wheel-wright's, and not Simmonds only, for she might have done better if she had chosen. It was in the good old times that they set up their little shop, and that their little girl was born who had been in the churchyard three-and-twenty years come Christmas. There were no times now like those before Mitchelhurst Place was sold, when she didn't know what rheumatism was, and there were none of your new-fangled Board Schools, to teach children to think little of their elders. It was not to be supposed that Mrs. Simmonds thought that her stiff old joints would become flexible again if the Rothwells came back to the manor-house, but she certainly felt that in their reign the world went its way with fewer obstructions and less weariness, and was more brightly visible without the aid of spectacles. She had an impression, too, that the weather was better. She straightened herself laboriously after taking the apple-pie from the oven, and was horrified to find the crust a little caught on one side. Having to explain how this had occurred when she carried it in, she had no opportunity of continuing the previous conversation, and the moment dinner was over Reynold was out again. The fact was that Mrs. Simmonds's parlour, which was small and low, and had been carefully shut up for many months, was not very attractive to the young man, who was fresh from the faded stateliness of the old Place. Besides, he was anxious to keep down importunate thoughts by sheer weariness, if in no other way.