“I’ve had a pretty dance, I have, this hour and more. Catch _me_, that’s all, ever coming to their tomfooleries again! Not I, indeed--no, not even if the Queen upon her throne was to be at the head of ’em!” And, in corroboration of this spirited resolve, John Beacham struck his stout stick into the ground with rather more of the strength of his good right arm than the occasion warranted. “Why, what’s the matter, John?” Honor said, amused, as any girl of her age might have been at his words and action. “What has anyone done to put you in such a pet?” And, half in reparation of the wrongs, slight though they were, which she was conscious of having done him, she stole her arm through his, and looked up with an air of pretty entreaty into his face. The sight was gall and wormwood to his mother. To do her justice, she really had talked and thought herself into the belief that Honor--this girl taken, as it pleased her to say, out of charity, and without so much as a “smock” to her back--was behaving undutifully and ungratefully to the husband who had bestowed upon her so many and such unmerited blessings. Her unjust prejudice did not go the length of persuading her that there was anything “really wrong” in her daughter-in-law’s conduct; but that Honor was vain, fond of admiration, and given to the liking of having “men about her,” Mrs. Beacham entertained no doubt. It was high time too that John, who was so ridiculous about Honor, should have a _little_ idea of what she really was. Not that _she_ wished to cause anything of disagreeableness between them. John was married--more was the pity--and he must make the best of it; but it did not follow that something mightn’t be done to put poor John upon his guard, and to show “milady” (the satirical old lady’s ironical _petit nom_ for her daughter-in-law) that she wasn’t going to lead that unsuspecting John altogether by the nose. “What has been done now, John, to put you in such a pet?” Honor said, little surmising that _she_ had either act or part in her husband’s evident annoyance. He looked for a moment searchingly into her honest eyes--eyes that had never deceived him yet, and in which he had yet to learn _distrust_. Something that he read there reassured him, for he softly patted, before he answered her, the hand that rested on his arm. “It isn’t much that _you_ have to do with it, my dear, I reckon, after all,” he said, drawing a long _pouf_ of satisfaction, after which, for his still further solace, he wiped his hot forehead with his handkerchief. “To tell you the truth, though, I thought at one time you had; and the man is such an unmitigated scamp!”