'I know――or can guess what it is about. I have not been up and down peddling here and hawking there, and not heard a thing or two. My ears are pointed, and I catch a good deal. Your father is just thrusting you on the same road as he has walked. It is my belief that if the little one of the flat fish said, I will swim straight, he would come out without crooked eyes, and not become a flounder, but be a mackerel. If once you begin to go in and out at the back door, you'll never take to that in the front of the house.' 'You do not understand――my father is not a man to be disobeyed.' 'I'd peddle before I did it,' said Winefred with vehemence. 'A peddling woman is honest, and carries her wares slung in front of her, and a――you know what――bears his behind his back. A peddling woman goes about by day along the high road, and is not caught slinking in bye-lanes of a night. You are a fine fellow with your Latin grammar, and learning to be a gentleman, to turn up your nose at my mother because she hawks laces, and then sneak away to cheat the government over spirits. I don't know whether it be a matter of right and wrong, all I know is it don't look honest, and I hate crooked ways.' 'I do not see what right you have to dictate to me.' 'I am advising only. Why, I will tell you.' She turned her peddler's box round under her arm. 'Last night mother and I were going over the down, and it was dark. Mother had her notions as to the way, and she was all wrong. She was making direct for the edge of the cliff; my eyes are younger, and I saw it, and I would go this way when she persisted in going that. Mother is an obstinate woman, and she would go her course; and because I stuck to it she was wrong, she caught me up and was going to carry me along her way. If we had gone three steps farther, we should have bounced into kingdom come, and our bodies would be washing now against the pebble ridge. As good luck would have it, up came your father with a lantern, and he saved us. I would return the favour. You are being drawn along the wrong path by him, and so I turn on you the lantern of common-sense and say, Go right instead of going wrong. That is my advice; take or leave it as you will.' Then Winefred shifted her package again and trudged away. When she reached the cottage on the undercliff, she found that Job Rattenbury was out. Her mother sat by the fire on a stool engaged in needlework, at the same time that she watched a pot that was boiling. Winefred laid the case of wares aside, and stood drawing in the scent of cooking through her nose. 'Good!' said she, 'uncommon――the smell of onions is all over the place; I believe there is going to be beefsteak pudding.' 'You are right,' said Jane. 'Thanks be to me for it,' said Winefred. Her mother looked up. 'You have been out amusing yourself; I cut up the meat and onions and made the pastry.'