lulled to rest, the old lady at Updown Paddocks did, as will speedily be seen, allow her temper to crop up, to the great hindrance of individual and general enjoyment in the house over which she ruled. “I suppose you mean to come and see the dance, Mrs. John?” (Honor was always “Mrs. John” with her mother-in-law, when the latter chose to fancy that her son’s wife was remembering the fact that in her veins ran the gentle blood of the Norcotts). “The people are used to see John, and as I always come in to have our healths drank, maybe they might be expecting you as well.” It was seven o’clock, and they, the scarcely congenial trio, were sitting silently, that Christmas afternoon, in the little parlour, resting after the labours of the day; John reading the _Farmer’s Gazette_, and Honor musing silently in a big armchair, her habitual seat. In answer to the old lady’s question, she replied that she was quite willing to go, that there was no hardship in walking across the farmyard to the barn. The evening was fine--looking a little like frost, she thought. “The sunset was beautiful,” Honor went on to say, falling back upon the commonplace, when she found her mother-in-law looking cross and dissatisfied at her lukewarm acquiescence. “I watched it from the hill above the garden. Such masses of red and purple, and such curious-shaped clouds! Did you notice it, John, before you came in?” John was unfortunately at that moment so intent upon an article in the _Gazette_ which touched upon a pet system of his own, that Honor’s question failed to strike upon his ear. The reason of his silence was perceived by her at once, and, like a good wife, she forbore to repeat her very trivial observation. All, therefore, would have been well, and no evil consequences would have followed on John’s wholly involuntary sin of omission, had not Mrs. Beacham, who chanced to be in rather an irritating mood, taxed her daughter indirectly with the terrible crime, in the old lady’s sight, of fine-ladyism. “Ha, ha, ha! I beg your pardon, though, Mrs. John, for laughing, but it is a good joke to hear you asking us busy folk if we’ve been amusing ourselves with looking at the sun! The sun indeed! My patience! To hear a woman grown like you talking such nonsense!” “I don’t think,” said Honor, flushing up, “that it can quite be called nonsense looking at the beautiful things that God has given us to enjoy. I have nothing to do, either. I often wish I had. I read, and I draw, and work a little; but I often wish I was obliged to be busy. I shouldn’t think then, and I hate thinking.”