“It’s just as I’ve always said! There’s nowt like seeing the world--having a bit of a look round, if it’s only over the near wall into the next bull-coppy! Westmorland folks is that set on their own yard o’ ground, it takes a travelling-crane to hawk ’em out. Why, Brack, it doesn’t bear thinking on what-like you were as a lad, popin’ about like a yard o’ pump-water, wi’ toes turning in an’ chin poking out--a reg’lar daft-watty! And now you’ve come back real quality, talking as like his lordship as two peacocks, and in a deal better fettle an’ more than a deal better-like! It fair frets me thinking of folk--folk I could put a name to--slouching and talking broad, clumping about in great boots and smelling of the shuppons, with never a thought to spare above stock, an’ never a word to throw at a dog! You’ve capt the lot of us, my lad, showing folks what they can frame for if they’ll nobbut try!” Brack glowed, seeing himself winsome and well-tailored, elegant, cultured, “arrived,” but before the women’s eyes rose Lup in his still, dumb dignity of the soil. Mrs. Dockeray was playing high. Armoured in commonplace virtues duly admitted, he would have stood little chance beside Brack’s glistening veneer; but mockery and contempt could not but give him place even in the most grudging imagination. Something of the pathos and power of Millet’s “Angelus” clung about him under her rough touch, showing him in full and beautiful accord with both earth and heaven. Unfortunately, Lup himself, coming in with Michael just as they sat down to supper, dispelled the illusion more than a little. His “bettremer” clothes were heavy and ill-cut, foiling the plate-glass impressions to which Brack added grace. His old-fashioned “bowler,” several sizes too small, gave him the anxious air of an uncertain juggler, while an astonishing red-and-yellow handkerchief of his father’s shrieked at Brack s peeping square of white silk. He followed Michael in with a forgotten catalogue, and was for making off again when Mrs. Dockeray netted him with cumbrous but sure sweep. “You’ll stop and have a bite with us now you’re here, surely! It’s not so many more chances we’ll have of a crack with you. Wolf’ll likely be set on getting back, so we’ll let him be, but I’ll not take nay from you, Lup, so you can just set yourself down! There’s Brack here with all Canada at his finger-ends, ready to learn you anything you’ve a mind to, an’ a deal more, I reckon! I’m real glad you looked in. The master’s never a word for us home-keeping folk after sales an’ such-like. He’s that weary he gets sluming in his chair afore he’s half-through, and it’s vexing when one’s aching for a bit o’ news. Brack’s not been; leastways, he’s never mentioned it.”