“Come now, take an egg, and don’t be foolish. They’re not like the Paddocks eggs, to be sure, but you may as well taste a bit--or a slice of ham. John, give Honor a slice of ham--terrible stripy it looks, to be sure, but what can you expect when one is that foolish as to go away from home in this sort of nonsensical way?” Honor, looking very pale, and with her eyes heavy with weeping, was sitting behind the big bronze tea-urn--an article of furniture coeval, doubtless, with the building of the Bell--and with a trembling hand was performing her accustomed duty of making tea for the family. John had good-naturedly offered to take the affair upon himself, but Mrs. Beacham had at once vetoed the idea. “Such stuff and nonsense!” she said; “as if making tea had ever been known in this world to do anybody harm! And a man, too, to set about doing such things! No, no. Take my word for it,” the energetic old woman went on to say, “there’s nothing like having something to do for keeping the spirits up, and you’ll see, John, if you don’t make a noodle of Honor, she’ll be herself again in half the time.” But though the old lady did thus throw cold water on John’s simple plans for his wife’s comfort, she did nevertheless, in her own way and to a certain extent, feel for the girl, whose only relation (and Mrs. Beacham entertained very strong old-fashioned prejudices on the score of consanguinity) was in such deadly peril, and that through her own husband’s hands. If John had not been so _very_ tender over Honor, her mother-in-law would have almost felt inclined, so piteous was the sight of her delicate white face, to, in her fashion, pet and sympathise with the “poor thing,” reminding her that “misfortunes will happen;” that “we are none of us, if we did but know it, more to be pitied than our neighbours;” that it would “all be the same a hundred years hence;” and, in short, recalling to the sufferer’s recollection all the various and stereotyped phrases of consolation which well-intentioned people are apt to din into the unwilling ears of the afflicted. “You will try an egg, my dear” (the use of this term of endearment was going great lengths for Mrs. Beacham), “and endeavour to make the best of things. It’s a sad thing, as I have known myself, to lose a father; but a father”--and here the excellent woman filled her mouth with the much-vituperated ham--“a father that one has never seen but once ain’t the same thing, in my opinion, as a father that has been a father, and has done his duty by one as a father should.” “But, mother,” interposed John, “there is no use in telling Honor that.”