"Nature!" snorted Reuben--"wot's Nature, I'd lik to know?" "The last word on most subjects," said Richard. "Well, is it? I reckon it äun't the last word on your wife." "I beg your pardon!"--Anne's chin came forward so like Richard's that one might gather he had borrowed the trick from her. "Well, 'carding to Nature, ma'am, and saving your presence, you're forty-five year if you're a day. I remember the very 'casion you wur born. Well, if I may be so bold, you döan't look past thirty. How's that? Just because you know some dodges worth two of Nature's, you've a way of gitting even wud her. Now if a lady can bust Nature at her dressing-täable, I reckon I can bust her on my farm." "This is most interesting," said Anne icily, raising her lorgnette and looking at Reuben as if he were a bad smell. "He means to be complimentary," said Richard. "Reckon I do!" cried Reuben genially, warmed by various liquors--"naun shall say I döan't know a fine woman when I see one. And I reckon as me and my darter-in-law are out after the säum thing--and that's the beating of Nature, wot you seem to set such a store by, Richard." "Well, she'll have you both in the end, anyhow." "She! no--she wöan't git me." "She'll get you when you die." "Oh, I döan't count that--that's going to good earth." "Perhaps she'll get you before then." Reuben banged the table with his fist. "I'm hemmed if she does. She'd have got me long ago if she'd ever been going to--when I wur young and my own hot blood wur lik to betray me. But I settled her then, and I'll settle her to the end of time. Mark my words, Richard my boy, there's always some way of gitting even wud her. Wot's nature?--nature's a thing; and a man's a--why he's a man, and he can always go one better than a thing. Nature mäakes potato-blight, so man mäakes Bordeaux spray; nature mäakes calf-husk, so man mäakes linseed oil; nature mäakes lice, so man mäakes lice-killer. Man's the better of nature all along, and I döan't mind proving it." Having thus delivered himself under the combined fire of the lorgnette and the pince-nez, Reuben poured himself out half a tumblerful of _crème de menthe_ and drank the healths of them both with their children, whereat Anne rose quickly from the table and sought refuge in the drawing-room.