“It’s the old wheeze--the same old fusty old wheeze! ‘What a Lancaster says, goes!’ It’s Lancaster and Lancaster to it. Guess the whole lot of you’ll be something struck of a heap when they turn out plaster imitations at the Judgment!” He leaned on the car, looking at her with tense impatience. “You’ll not speak, but there’s folks in plenty putting words in your mouth. Now just listen right here! It wouldn’t take more than a cent’s-worth of shove to set his lordship against the Lugg for good and all. I had him wobbling, as it was. _You_ can put the cinch on him, if you choose. Lancaster’s only a paid servant, when all’s said, and he’d have to knuckle under. You’ll never go to the Pride, with the fear of the sea on you, just to help the Lancaster tradition make good? I hope to God I may see them fired out of the countryside before I’m a year older, humbled and cursed and damned and broke!” She looked at him straightly, then, answering him straightly for the first time. “I’ve nowt to say to you, Brack Holliday, and them as says I have, lies! Who made the likes o’ _you_ judge betwixt me an’ the Lancasters? But I’ll tell you what it is--you’re an over-throng, fidging, meddling jammy-lang-neck, as teptious as a wamp! You’re nowt but a daft rabbit scuttling to ground afore a storm. It’s not _you_ that has anything to fear, and them as has can get through it without your help. There’s bigger things than you in this world, Canada Brack--ay, and a parlish lot o’ bigger folk an’ all!--and happen you’ll learn it sooner than late!” She wiped him out of existence with her old stare over the sea, and, raging but silenced, he turned the Flanders to the gate. By contrast, the atmosphere of Ladyford was all pure comfort and grace. Here he was an honoured guest. Here he could flow conversationally without fear of ironic silence. The string of self twanged joyfully in the breath of Mrs. Dockeray’s admiration. It was pleasant to sup to the sauce of her interest, to see Rowly’s eyes widen at his effects. Still more pleasant to stand behind Francey at the piano, asking in a light tenor, from a far-off point not specified, if they thought of him in the Dear Old Home. But it was rarest of all to sit opposite to her, watching her pale cheek bent over her knitting, while her mother, with discrimination almost too marked for comfort, called attention to his good points.