“I wonder what the yearlings think of this,” was John’s remark, one bitter, blustering day, as he and Honor were boldly wrestling with the breeze on the long wooden pier. “I only hope that Simmons has been minding my orders. The worst of it is, that in these days understrappers are all for having opinions of their own--a thing _I_ never was allowed,” he added with a cheery smile, “when I was a youngster. I think the old woman is about right in saying that everything is changed since her time. I wonder, though, what _we_ should think of goings on if they were to come back to what she remembers them fifty years ago.” “We should find some of them very funny, I daresay,” said Honor, laughing. “Dress, for instance. Now, I think Mrs. Beacham’s lace cap so nice for an old lady, but--” “Don’t call mother ‘Mrs. Beacham,’ Honey,” John said. “Honey” was a pet name that he had bestowed upon his wife. It was _sweet_, he thought, and delicate, and besides in the Bible it was written that “honey was good;” so altogether it seemed to suit his little wife; and she, after laughingly telling him that the _petit nom_ was still more Irish than her own, answered to it as readily as though she had been called a “Honey” from her birth. “I want _my_ mother to be the same as if she was your own, Honey,” John said. “She’s a good woman--a better, to my thinking, never trod the ground. But she’s cranky sometimes. I can’t say that she isn’t _that_. You’ll have to bear with her, Honey, I don’t doubt, now and then; but you won’t mind that, pet? One must make allowances for old people; they get into ways of their own, you know, and it isn’t easy for them to change. Indeed, I’m not sure,” he added musingly, “that, after a certain age, anyone is much the better for altering the ways that they’ve got used to.” “After a ‘certain age’! Ah, now, John,” Honor said in a tone of playful reproach, “sure you’re not going to say that you’re not the better for not living lonely like at the Paddocks? I only hope though--ah, you don’t know, John, how much I wish it”--and she spoke with a sad kind of earnestness--“that your mother--I’ll not call her Mrs. Beacham, if you don’t like it--will not think that you are the worse for change. I know I’m foolish, John, and young and inexperienced; but I mean to try and please her. I hope she’ll like me. Do you think she will, John?” and she looked up wistfully in her husband’s face, awaiting his reply.