"I think," said Mrs. Con uneasily, "’e’ll teel all those new things ’e’s craikin’ about and I wonder what Old Squire would say if ’is ’ead was above the earth." "Some do say ’is ’ead’s up now." Mrs. Tom’s smile was faint, a twitch of the lips, a recognition of Mrs. Con’s tremulous outlook. "I think if Leadville was to start ’is sugar-beet and terbacker teelin’ ’e ’ud ’av a ’ot time wi’ Old Squire!" "Mrs. Byron," began Aunt Louisa and stopped to re-thread her needle. She spoke as if her mouth were full of pins. Use had made her able to speak through a bristling _chevaux de frise_ while age made her forget whether the pins were there or not. "Mrs. Byron is the livin’ image of Old Squire as I remember’n." She glanced at his elbow-chair, wide and built with a cunning hand. Pushed against the wall, its red cushions were hidden under billows of black material, but this drapery only made its outlines the more regal. None of those who looked but thought of the man for whom it had been made as still dimly occupying it. More than one had a glimpse of silver hair above a masterful face and caught the faint sound of an imperious voice. "I seed’n when ’e was in ’is coffin," continued Louisa, recalling further a mountainous bulk. "I warn’t higher than the table when ’e died but I can remember mother takin’ me in." "’E was a great big man, wasn’t ’e?" asked Mrs. Brenton. "A lickin’ great feller!" Aunt Louisa basted as she talked and the other women, most of them younger by a generation, listened with interest. With the exception of Mrs. Brenton they knew why the old woman’s mother had been anxious to imprint the features of Freathy Rosevear on her child’s plastic memory. "When he was dead," continued Aunt Louisa, who in her neatness, her precision, was as unlike her sire as any child might be, "they couldn’t get his coffin overstairs. They had to take it up in pieces and put’n together in’s bedroom. And then they couldn’t get’n out. They ’ad to take out the big winder in the end of the ’ouse and slide’n down over the boords. I can remember as if ’twere yesterday. ’E was so ’eavy they had the bier out from Stowe to carr’n; for ’twas more’n the bearers could manage." "And S’bina was like ’im," said Mrs. Con curiously. She had heard the tale of Old Squire’s funeral before but that his granddaughter resembled him so closely was new to her. "The spit of ’n. ’E was a great big red-faced feller with flamin’ ’air which was always stickin’ up on end and ’is voice, it was like it was going to wake the dead." "I wonder at your mother takin’ you to see ’im, an old dead man. It don’t ’ardly seem the thing, do it?" said Mrs. Brenton looking round at the others but finding them, to her surprise, dull and unresponsive.