n Winterborne's menage, was so uniform and persistent
that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was
aware of. That suppressed sympathy which had showed in her face ever
since her arrival told him as much too plainly.

"This muddling style of house-keeping is what you've not lately been
used to, I suppose?" he said, when they were a little apart.

"No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything here in
dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is--not quite nice;
but everything else is."

"The oil?"

"On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one's dress. Still, mine is
not a new one."

Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright, had
smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish, and
refrained from rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the mirror-like
effect that the mixture produced as laid on. Giles apologized and
called Creedle; but he felt that the Fates were against him.

CHAPTER X.

Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked from the oven, laid on a
snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as in
Flemish "Last Suppers." Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with
amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior and make things
pleasant, expressing his admiration of Creedle's cleverness when they
were alone.

"I s'pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr.
Creedle, was when you was in the militia?"

"Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and
many ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has worked hard
in helping me to bring things to such perfection to-day. 'Giles,' says
I, though he's maister. Not that I should call'n maister by rights,
for his father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had
twinned us and been our nourishing."

"I s'pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr.
Creedle?"

"Oh yes. Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and
hang-fairs and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah, many's the
patriarch I've seed come and go in this parish! There, he's calling for
more plates. Lord, why can't 'em turn their plates bottom upward for
pudding, as they used to do in former days?"

Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a
half-unconscious state. He could not get over the initial failures in
his scheme for advancing his suit, and hence he did not know that he
w