“Oh,” he said, “it’s you!” in a tone which was not encouraging. He had forgotten old Janet, happily, and it was with anything but pleasure that he felt her image thus thrust upon him again. “Who should it be but me?” she said. “There is none that can take such an interest. And, Mr. Fred, it is time you should be taking your ain place. This house of Yalton should go into no other hands but them it belongs to. Oh, I canna speak more plain; but you must rouse yourself up, and you must take your ain place.” “I don’t know what you have to do with it,” cried Fred angrily, “nor why you should thrust your advice upon me. I am here in my own place. What do you mean? I ought to be at Oxford, that would be my own place.” “Na, na! that would be just more schooling,” said Janet, “and it’s no schooling you want, but to stand up like a man, and be maister of your father’s house, as is your right. Oh, laddie, I tell you I canna speak more plain; but take you my word, it’ll save more trouble, and worse trouble, if you will just grip the reins in your hands and take your ain place!” He laughed contemptuously in his impatience and anger. “You had better save your advice for things you understand,” he said. “Don’t you know the law considers me an infant, and that I can do nothing till I’m of age--if there was anything to do? But all is going as well as can be--almost too well--as if he were not missed,” the young man cried abruptly with a movement of feeling, which indeed was momentary and had not come into his mind before. Perhaps it was an influence from the brain of the old woman beside him which sent it there now. “That’s just what I wanted to say,” said old Janet--“as if _he_ were not missed. All settled for her, and smoothed down and made fair and easy, as if _himsel_’ were to the fore. There’s trouble in the air, Mr. Fred, and if you dinna bestir yourself, and take your ain place, and get a grip of the reins in your ain hand----” “Rubbish!” said Fred. “How can I get the reins, till I come of age? If there was any need, which there is not, my mother knows better than half a dozen of me.” “Your mother!” said old Janet, with the natural contempt of an old servant for the mistress; then she added in a different tone: “if it was only your mother”--shaking her old head.