“My mother knows tolerably well what she is about,” he said, “and there’s often plenty of wisdom to be picked out of those dry sayings of hers. I’ll be bound now she’s counting the days till we come back; I can see her as plain now as if I was at home” (and John grew quite enthusiastic as the _homely_ prospect rose up before him): “I can see her giving out the yellow soap for the house-cleaning, and keeping the maids up to their duty--ah, she was always a good one for that--and then off to the parlour to dust the ornamental china with her cambric handkerchief. Dear old mother! She mayn’t be one of the tender sort--not what I call a crying kind of woman--but she’s good at heart, though I don’t remember--no, not even when my father died--I can’t say I do, that she what you may call shed tears. She may have done so, of course, and I not know it; but to the best of my belief my mother is just the kind of woman not to.” It was characteristic of John Beacham, and of his extreme correctness and scrupulosity of speech, that after delivering himself of this interesting family diagnostic, he seemed somewhat uneasy in his mind, and as if not thoroughly satisfied that he had spoken no more than the exact and literal truth. It was characteristic too of his wife, and of a habit which was hers of putting _this_ and _that_ together, that she read to herself (all unwittingly, for the accusation of perusing “character” would have been received by a laugh of incredulity) not only in John’s cautious ways, but in the proof just adduced of her mother-in-law’s lack of tenderness, elements of future discomfort for herself. Visions of this _maîtresse femme_, stern, thrifty, and uncompromising, darkened her mental vision. Ever since her engagement to John, Mrs. Beacham had been, to a certain extent, an object of dread to the quick-witted girl, who felt instinctively that she would never be cordially welcomed, save by its master, to the old farm-house. She saw her now, in her mind’s eye, with that symbolic piece of yellow soap in her bony hands--cold, square-cut, neat, and clean. Very, ay, terribly cold she must be, Honor thought, or she would have wept _sometimes_ in the years that John had known her; Mrs. Beacham must--so decided the April-natured girl, to whom tears and smiles came both so readily--either have been blessed with a very happy life, or with very limited powers of feeling. It was pleasanter on all accounts to attribute the insensibility of her fellow-woman to the former cause; so she said in her gentle acquiescing way: