nnacherib. But if
you think as a mother's heart is agoing to be overcome by that sort o'
talk, and as I shall turn my back upon my very own born child, you've
fell into the biggest error of your lifetime."

Rachel rapped again somewhat louder than before.

"Canst choose betwixt that young rip and me," replied Sennacherib.

"That's right; let the parish know your hard-heartedness! Theer's
somebody knockin' at the door. Go and tell 'em what you've made up your
wicked mind to--do!"

Sennacherib thrust his head into the hall and stared frowningly at the
visitor through his spectacles.

"Good-morning, sir," said Rachel, with frigid politeness. "I called
for the purpose of paying my respects to Mrs. Eld. If the moment is
inauspicious I will call again."

At the sound of her voice Mrs. Sennacherib appeared--a large woman of
matronly figure but dejected aspect. She had been comely, but thirty
years of protest and resignation had lifted the inner ends of her
eyebrows and depressed the corners of her mouth until, even in her
most cheerful moments, she had a look of meek submission to unmeasured
wrongs.

"Dear me!" said Mrs. Sennacherib, sailing round her husband and down the
hall, "it's Miss Blythe! Come in, my dear, and tek off your cloak and
bonnet. I'm glad to see you. I wondered if you was never comin' to see
me. And how be you?" She bent over the little figure of her guest and
buried it in an embrace like that of a feather-bed. "It's beautiful
weather for the time o' year," she continued, almost tearfully, "and I
have been a-thinking of makin' a call upon you; but I'm short of breath,
and Eld is such a creetur he'd rather see a body stop in the house as if
it was a prison, than harness the pony and drive me half a mile, to save
his life."

"Short o' breath!" said Sennacherib. "Thee talkest like one as is short
o' breath! Her talks enough," he added, addressing the visitor, "to
break the wind of a Derby race-hoss."

"Ah," said his wife, shaking her head in a kind of doleful triumph,
"Miss Blythe won't ha' been long i' the village afore her'll know what
manner o' man you be, Sennacherib."

"I'll leave thee to tell her," said Sennacherib, with a grunt of scorn.
"If I'd ha' been the manner o' man you'd ha' liked for a husband,
I _should_ ha' been despisable. My missis"--he addressed his wife's
visitor again--"ought to ha' married a door-mat, then her could ha'
wiped her feet upon him wheniver the fancy took her."