"Oh, Melville, you have had every advantage; you ought to know everything. But Aunt Letitia was quite right--the money spent upon you at Oxford was wasted." "Thanks for your high opinion. I ought to be vastly grateful for it. But to speak of other things: I have bidden a friend to stay here for a week. He will like country air, and to drink milk and curds-and-whey. He arrives at Wells by the Bath mail; and I shall drive in with you and my father, and hire a post-chaise at the Swan to bring him out." "I hope he is not a fine gentleman," Joyce said. "He is a very fine gentleman indeed," was the answer; "and, Joyce, persuade mother _not_ to put on that big bib, and make herself look like a housekeeper. It will appal Arundel, and make him feel out of his element." "If he is to feel that, what does he come for?" Joyce said, angrily. "We want no upstarts here." "Upstarts! that is fine talking. Arundel comes of one of the oldest families in England. Not older than ours; though, unhappily, we live as if we had sprung from the gutter, and do not get any proper respect." "Respect!" exclaimed Joyce, indignantly. "Respect! As if father were not respected as a justice! and as if _you_----" Joyce stopped; she felt too indignant to go on. "My dear little sister," Melville said, with a grand air of pity--"my dear little sister, you are only ignorant. If you knew a little more of the habits and customs of the higher classes, you would not talk so foolishly." "I do not wish to know more about them if you have got _your_ habits from associating with them." Melville smiled, and did not betray the least irritation. "My dear," he said, "facts are stubborn things. Does it never strike you, that though my father dines at the houses of the gentry in the county, sits on the bench, and rides to cover, you and my mother are not invited to accompany him. The truth is my good mother dislikes the usages of _genteel_ life." Melville used that objectionable word with emphasis. Genteel was in those days used as some of us now use words which are scarcely more significant, though generally accepted--"Good form," "A 1," and so forth. "It is," Melville continued, grandly, "the result of early associations; and so we eat heavy one o'clock meals and nine o'clock suppers, instead of dining at three or four o'clock; and my mother, instead of receiving company in the house, works in it like a servant. It is a vast pity, my dear. It keeps the family down, and destroys your chances in life. So I advise you to try to alter things. Now Arundel is coming, I want to dine at a less outlandish hour, and I----" Whatever Mr. Melville Falconer wanted Joyce did not stay to hear. She left the large hall by one door as her mother entered by the other, bearing in her hand a tray of delicately prepared breakfast for her son, who was wholly unworthy of her attentions, and would have been better without them.