"But his debts have hampered father dreadfully I know, and he does so detest his fine gentleman airs. It seems to me," said Joyce, vehemently, "to be ashamed of a father like ours is--Oh! I have no word bad enough, and Melville _is_ ashamed, and he does not like mother looking after the dairy and the butter." "Well," said Piers, tapping his crutch upon the ground, "I think mother does fidget and worry too much in the house and about the place; but it is her way, and no one could alter it." "I don't know that I wish to alter it," Joyce said, hotly. "Mother has done so much for us, and I hate to think she is slighted by her children. Melville _does_ slight her, and when he talks in that drawling, affected voice, and ties his starched cravats twenty times, and flings them down again if the bow is crooked. I despise _him_, and that is the truth." Piers shrugged his shoulders. "Well, we must go back to breakfast," he said; "I am hungry, and it must be nearly eight o'clock." The brother and sister walked slowly towards the house, and as they crossed the lawn, from which the sun had kissed away all the dewdrops, a bell over the stables rang, and a little alert figure appeared in the porch. "Joyce, Joyce! What are you dawdling for? It is past eight o'clock. Getting your feet drenched with the dew, I'll warrant. No, don't bring any dead birds here, Piers; I won't have it. The house is just like a pigsty with all your rubbish. Take it round to the back kitchen. I have a pretty hard morning's work before me, and you must lend a hand, Joyce, I can tell you." "Father said I was to go with him to Wells, mother, and do your shopping." "Well, that won't be till eleven o'clock. There's time enough first to help me to give out the stores and get the linen aired for the boys' room and the spare bedroom, and you forget, I suppose, that your brothers are coming home for the holidays on Friday, and this is Wednesday. I shall be all behindhand, if I don't look out. I wish Melville's fine gentleman visitor farther!" Mrs. Falconer spoke rapidly, and in rather a high key. Her accent was decidedly provincial, and she did not measure out her words with the slow precision which her eldest son Melville considered a mark of _bon ton_. Mrs. Falconer was the daughter of a large farmer in a neighbouring county, and the squire had married her in haste, though he had never repented at leisure. She was thoroughly loyal-hearted and true as a wife and mother; brusque and blunt, holding all fine things and fine people in supreme contempt. And yet, according to the perversity of women-kind, she spoiled and indulged the son whose love of fine things seemed likely to be his bane, and brought perpetual trouble upon his good and honourable father.