ke to
Mr. Meadowcroft, he was still on his guard--on his guard against the
two young men, as I fancied by the direction which his eyes took on
these occasions. When we began our meal, I had noticed for the first
time that Silas Meadowcroft's left hand was strapped up with surgical
plaster; and I now further observed that John Jago's wandering brown
eyes, furtively looking at everybody round the table in turn, looked
with a curious, cynical scrutiny at the young man's injured hand.

By way of making my first evening at the farm all the more embarrassing
to me as a stranger, I discovered before long that the father and sons
were talking indirectly _at_ each other, through Mr. Jago and through
me. When old Mr. Meadowcroft spoke disparagingly to his overlooker of
some past mistake made in the cultivation of the arable land of the
farm, old Mr. Meadowcroft's eyes pointed the application of his hostile
criticism straight in the direction of his two sons When the two sons
seized a stray remark of mine about animals in general, and applied it
satirically to the mismanagement of sheep and oxen in particular, they
looked at John Jago, while they talked to me. On occasions of this
sort--and they happened frequently--Naomi struck in resolutely at the
right moment, and turned the talk to some harmless topic. Every time
she took a prominent part in this way in keeping the peace, melancholy
Miss Meadowcroft looked slowly round at her in stern and silent
disparagement of her interference. A more dreary and more disunited
family party I never sat at the table with. Envy, hatred, malice and
uncharitableness are never so essentially detestable to my mind as when
they are animated by a sense of propriety, and work under the surface.
But for my interest in Naomi, and my other interest in the little
love-looks which I now and then surprised passing between her and
Ambrose, I should never have sat through that supper. I should
certainly have taken refuge in my French novel and my own room.

At last the unendurably long meal, served with ostentatious profusion,
was at an end. Miss Meadowcroft rose with her ghostly solemnity, and
granted me my dismissal in these words:

"We are early people at the farm, Mr. Lefrank. I wish you good-night."

She laid her bony hands on the back of Mr. Meadowcroft's invalid-chair,
cut him short in his farewell salutation to me, and wheeled him out to
his bed as if she were wheeling him out to his grave.

"Do