Archie heard this diatribe as he stood outside, waiting under the protection of the great ash tree till a passing shower should have blown over, with a sense of the truth of it which went over him in a great wave of heat and discomfiture down to his very boots. That was just what he was, a sham with nothing in his pocket, combining all the defects of the Glesco great people with an absolute want of that real foundation on which they stood. He had no education, no manners, nothing upon which any claim of superiority could be put forth. Superiority! he did not mean that. Poor Archie felt himself the equal of nobody, not even of Sandy the groom, who, at least, had an occupation of his own and knew how to do it. And no money in his pocket! that was perhaps the worst of all. He had always heard a great deal about money all his life. Mrs. Brown had an unlimited reverence for it, and for those who possessed it. She had no particular knowledge of the gentry. But to be able to pay your way, to be able to lay by a little, to have something in the bank, that was the height of her ambition. And though she highly disapproved of large expenditure, she admired it as the most dazzling of greatness. “He just never minds what he spends,” she had said of Rowland a hundred times, almost with awe. Archie had been accustomed to admire this quality in his father from his earliest consciousness. And to stand on the soil which to him was his father’s (though the people of the place were so strong upon the fact that he was only a tenant), almost within sight of the great house which was being fitted up regardless of expence, and to have nothing in his pocket, filled the lad with the bitterest shame and humiliation. “If I had only five pounds--or knew where to get it,” he said to himself with a gesture of disgust and despair. “Five pounds,” said Marion, who heard him though he did not want to be heard, and repeated it in her usual clear very distinct voice, not lowered in the least, “What do ye want with five pounds? and why don’t you get it from papa?” Archie thought he heard a laugh from the cottage which proved that the men inside had heard. It wrought him almost to fury. He dashed out into the rain and left her standing there astonished. Marion did not care for what the groom and the gamekeeper said. She was quite confident that she had only to “ask papa,” and that whatever she wished would fall into her lap. She had not, like Archie, any difficulty in asking papa. After a few moments of hesitation she too stepped out of the shelter of the ash, and followed her brother through the wood. The shower was over, the sun had come out again, every branch and leaf was glistening. The birds had taken up their songs at the very note where they left off, with renewed vigour. Marion too broke out into a little song as she went on. The boughs as she brushed past scattered shining drops like diamonds over her, which she eluded with a little run and cry.