Part 52 (1/2)

He thanked me very heartily. I showed him into the drawing-room, told my wife where I was going, and not to wait dinner for me--I would take my chance--and joined Mr. Stokes.

”You have no idea, then,” I said, after we had gone about half-way, ”what makes your wife so uneasy?”

”No, I haven't,” he answered; ”except it be,” he resumed, ”that she was too hard, as I thought, upon our Mary, when she wanted to marry beneath her, as wife thought.”

”How beneath her? Who was it she wanted to marry?”

”She did marry him, sir. She has a bit of her mother's temper, you see, and she would take her own way.”

”Ah, there's a lesson to mothers, is it not? If they want to have their own way, they mustn't give their own temper to their daughters.”

”But how are they to help it, sir?”

”Ah, how indeed? But what is your daughter's husband?”

”A labourer, sir. He works on a farm out by Carpstone.”

”But you have worked on Mr. Barton's farm for many years, if I don't mistake?”

”I have, sir; but I am a sort of a foreman now, you see.”

”But you weren't so always; and your son-in-law, whether he work his way up or not, is, I presume, much where you were when you married Mrs.

Stokes?”

”True as you say, sir; and it's not me that has anything to say about it. I never gave the man a nay. But you see, my wife, she always do be wanting to get her head up in the world; and since she took to the shopkeeping--”

”The shopkeeping!” I said, with some surprise; ”I didn't know that.”

”Well, you see, sir, it's only for a quarter or so of the year. You know it's a favourite walk for the folks as comes here for the bathing--past our house, to see the great cave down below; and my wife, she got a bit of a sign put up, and put a few ginger-beer bottles in the window, and--”

”A bad place for the ginger-beer,” I said.

”They were only empty ones, with corks and strings, you know, sir. My wife, she know better than put the ginger-beer its own self in the sun. But I do think she carry her head higher after that; and a farm-labourer, as they call them, was none good enough for her daughter.”

”And hasn't she been kind to her since she married, then?”

”She's never done her no harm, sir.”

”But she hasn't gone to see her very often, or asked her to come and see you very often, I suppose?”

”There's ne'er a one o' them crossed the door of the other,” he answered, with some evident feeling of his own in the matter.

”Ah; but you don't approve of that yourself, Stokes?”

”Approve of it? No, sir. I be a farm-labourer once myself; and so I do want to see my own daughter now and then. But she take after her mother, she do. I don't know which of the two it is as does it, but there's no coming and going between Carpstone and this.”

We were approaching the house. I told Stokes he had better let her know I was there; for that, if she had changed her mind, it was not too late for me to go home again without disturbing her. He came back saying she was still very anxious to see me.

”Well, Mrs. Stokes, how do you feel to-day?” I asked, by way of opening the conversation. ”I don't think you look much worse.”