the door-post with a melancholy pimpled face, looking as irrelevant to the daylight as a last night’s guttered candle,—all this may not seem a very seductive form of temptation; but the majority of men in Basset found it fatally alluring when encountered on their road toward four o’clock on a wintry afternoon; and if any wife in Basset wished to indicate that her husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, she could hardly do it more emphatically than by saying that he didn’t spend a shilling at Dickison’s from one Whitsuntide to another. Mrs Moss had said so of _her_ husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood to find fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And nothing could be less pacifying to Mr Tulliver than the behaviour of the farmyard gate, which he no sooner attempted to push open with his riding-stick than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are known to do, to the peril of shins, whether equine or human. He was about to get down and lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shadowed drearily by the large half-timbered buildings, up to the long line of tumble-down dwelling-houses standing on a raised causeway; but the timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on,—namely, not to get down from his horse during this visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon. Mrs Moss heard the sound of the horse’s feet, and, when her brother rode up, was already outside the kitchen door, with a half-weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms. Mrs Moss’s face bore a faded resemblance to her brother’s; baby’s little fat hand, pressed against her cheek, seemed to show more strikingly that the cheek was faded. “Brother, I’m glad to see you,” she said, in an affectionate tone. “I didn’t look for you to-day. How do you do?” “Oh, pretty well, Mrs Moss, pretty well,” answered the brother, with cool deliberation, as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that question. She knew at once that her brother was not in a good humour; he never called her Mrs Moss except when he was angry, and when they were in company. But she thought it was in the order of nature that people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs Moss did not take her stand on the equality of the human race; she was a patient, prolific, loving-hearted woman. “Your husband isn’t in the house, I suppose?” added Mr Tulliver after a grave pause, during which four children had run out, like chickens whose mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the hen-coop. “No,” said Mrs Moss, “but he’s only in the potato-field yonders. Georgy, run to the Far Close in a minute, and tell father your uncle’s come. You’ll get down, brother, won’t you, and take something?” “No, no; I can’t get down. I must be going home again directly,” said Mr Tulliver, looking at the distance.