“Hard upon her! Haven't I been watching her? Haven't I ears and eyes in my head, like everybody else? It's only one meal I've set down to beside her, so far, but one 'll do for me! With her nasty supercilious smile, and her no-thank-you this and no-thank-you that! I never did know anybody take such a delight in refusing things. Look at her about that hare!” “Yes; and your mother had spent all morning at it. I'm very much afraid she's knocked herself up over it, for she's lying down, too. Your mother is not so strong as she was, John William. I'm very much afraid that matter of Missy has been preying on her nerves.” “I'd rather have Missy than this here Miriam,” said John William, after a pause, and all at once his voice was full of weariness. The same thought was in Mr. Teesdale's mind, but he did not give expression to it. Presently he said, still pacing the room with his long-legged, weak-kneed stride: “I wonder what Mr. Oliver meant when he hinted that I should find Miriam so different from the girls of our day? Where are the tricks and habits that he alluded to? Poor Missy had plenty, but I can't see any in Miriam.” “Can't you? Then I can. Ways of another kind altogether. Did the girls in your day turn up their noses at things before people's faces?” “No.” “Did they sneer when they talked to their elders and betters?” “No; but we are only Miriam's elders, mind—not her betters.” “Could they smile without looking supercilious, and could they open their mouths without showing their superiority?” “Of course they could.” “There you are then! One more question—about Mr. Oliver this time. When you left the old country he hadn't the position he has now, had he?” “No, no; very far from it. He was just beginning business, and in a small way, too. Now he is a very wealthy man.” “Then he hadn't got as good an education as he's been able to give his children, I reckon?” “No, you're right. We went to school together, he and I,” said Mr. Teesdale simply. “Then don't you see?” cried his son, jumping up from the sofa where he had been sitting, while the old man still walked up and down the room. “Don't you see, father? Mr. Oliver was warning you against what he himself had suffered from. You bet that Miss Miriam picks him up, and snubs him and sneers at him, just as she does with us!” Which was the cleverest deduction that this unsophisticated young farmer had ever arrived at in his life; but puzzling constantly over another matter had lent a new activity to his brain, and much worry had sharpened his wits. Old Teesdale accepted his son's theory readily enough, but yet sorrowfully, and the more so because the more he saw of his old friend's child, the less he liked her.