They dined at three o'clock at the brewery, and during dinner on this day the father of the family made himself very disagreeable. He scolded the maid-servant till the poor girl didn't know the spoons from the forks. He abused the cook's performances till that valuable old retainer declared that if "master got so rampageous he might suit hisself, the sooner the better; she didn't care how soon; she'd cooked victuals for his betters and would again." He snarled at his daughters till they perked up their faces and came silently to a mutual agreement that they would not condescend to notice him further while he held on in his present mood. And he replied to his wife's questions,--questions intended to be soothing and kindly conjugal,--in such a tone that she determined to have it out with him before she allowed him to go to bed. "She knew her duty," she said to herself, "and she could stand a good deal. But there were some things she couldn't stand and some things that weren't her duty." After dinner Tappitt took himself out at once to his office in the brewery, and then, for the first time, saw the "Baslehurst Gazette and Totnes Chronicle" for that week. The "Baslehurst Gazette and Totnes Chronicle" was an enterprising weekly newspaper, which had been originally intended to convey on Sunday mornings to the inhabitants of South Devonshire the news of the past week, and the paper still bore the dates of successive Sundays. But it had gradually pushed itself out into the light of its own world before its own date, gaining first a night and then a day, till now, at the period of which I am speaking, it was published on the Friday morning. "You ought just to look at this," a burly old foreman had said, handing him the paper in question, with his broad thumb placed upon a certain column. This foreman had known Bungall, and though he respected Tappitt, he did not fear him. "You should just look at this. Of course it don't amount to nothing; but it's as well to see what folks say." And he handed the paper to his master, almost making a hole in it by screwing his thumb on to the spot he wished to indicate.