“It ain’t much good,” she said quietly, “giving me the letter now. I couldn’t read a word of such fiddling writing as that without my specs. After breakfast, my dear, I’ll see what _I_ can make of it. So the Colonel’s all right again, is he? Well, well, I never thought, for one, that there was much cause for fear; but Honor, she was so wild to go, there was no use trying to stop her. I declare to goodness--I never said so before, John, for what was the use? it would only have worritted you--but I declare to goodness, she was like as if she didn’t know whether her head or her heels was uppermost, when she was packing up. Glad of a change, I suppose, like all young people. It’s only nat’ral she should get tired--such a young thing as she is--of the Paddocks--not nineteen yet; and you--though you don’t look it, that I must say--nearly old enough to be her father. As for me,” rising leisurely from her chair, for her morning task was over, and the “specs,” needed for the perusal of her daughter-in-law’s letter, were to be searched for on the adjacent work-table,--“as for me, in course your wife’s glad enough to get out of _my_ sight and hearing. An old body like me, do what she will, is sure to find herself in the way; and I _have_ found myself in the way, I don’t deny it, John, though it ain’t a pleasant thing to say, least of all to you, my dear.” And Mrs. Beacham, after this pleasant exordium, donned her tortoiseshell spectacles, and commenced what seemed likely to prove no easy task, namely, the deciphering of Honor’s flowing but not over-legible caligraphy. To describe John’s feelings during the long-drawn-out operation would be impossible. Already deeply hurt and wounded by the mere passing thought (for his nature was too excellent for the spontaneous breeding therein of harsh suspicions or dark surmises of evil) that he might have been the dupe of Colonel Norcott’s (not his wife’s--_that_ conjecture was reserved for Mrs. Beacham’s less indulgent breast to harbour) underhand designs, his mother’s preamble--_surgit amari aliquid_--together with her running comments on poor Honor’s rather confused and disconnected letter, tried both his feelings and his temper severely. “Well, mother,” he said at last, his patience giving way as much under his own troubled thoughts as his mother’s covert hints and very unpleasant guesses; “well, mother, if you talk till doomsday you won’t make things different from what they are. It’s as plain to me as it is to you that Honor wants to stay in London with her father. God knows that I’d be glad enough to think it wasn’t so; but it is, and there’s an end of it.” “But, John, surely you’re not going to let Honor have her way? You’re never going to allow--”