"To Barley Wood!--to Mrs. Hannah More! Mother won't hear of it. Your aunt had better not meddle. What do you think about it yourself?" "I should like to pay a visit--a _short_ visit--to Barley Wood. That is quite different from going to school. But with the boys coming home, and Melville and his friend at Fair Acres, I doubt if I could be spared. It might do me good to go, father; I mean, make me all the more useful at home afterwards." "What do you expect Mrs. Hannah More to do to you?--cut you into a pattern, as she would cut an old woman's cloak, eh? However, if you wish to go, and any more is said, I'll manage it for you. Perhaps no more _will_ be said; your aunt is just as likely to forget all about it." "Yes, I know that," Joyce said, with a little ring of disappointment in her voice. "I'll tell you what pattern I would not have you cut into on any account; and that is poor die-away, languishing Charlotte Benson. Poor thing! if she is a specimen of boarding-schools and accomplishments, I would sooner have Jane Watson for a daughter." "Charlotte paints flowers very well, father," Joyce said; "and she has worked a figure in Berlin wool of a woman in a red gown feeding chickens; and----" They had been jogging along at a very leisurely pace, and the sound of fast-trotting horses made Joyce look back. "To the right, father! quick! it's the post-chaise from the Swan." The squire pulled up towards the high hedge, and the post-chaise dashed past, the luggage behind, and the two young men lying back in it. The gates of Fair Acres were in sight, and the carriage turned in with an imposing flourish of the post-boy's whip. "Look here, Joyce, that is a sign of the times. That poor foolish popinjay of ours is only drifting on with the tide. He has brought another young fellow, I daresay, as idle as himself, to eat my bread and give himself airs. Well, I will put up with it for a week, and then _both_ have notice to quit; nor do I desire to see either of them darken my door again. Melville shall travel if he likes, but it shall be across the water--to America, where, if a little of this nonsense is not knocked out of him, my name is not Arthur Falconer." With this outburst of masculine indignation the squire subsided, and then quietly drove round to the stables, while the post-chaise was being unloaded at the front door; and Melville was giving the post-boy as large a "douceur"--or, as we should have it called in these days, a "tip"--as befitted the imitator of the first gentleman in Europe. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. THE LADY OF BARLEY WOOD. There was a mixture of dignity and simplicity in the reception which Mrs. Falconer gave her son's friend which did not fail to strike him.