provincial, and she did not measure out her words with the
slow precision which her eldest son Melville considered a mark of _bon
ton_.

Mrs. Falconer was the daughter of a large farmer in a neighbouring
county, and the squire had married her in haste, though he had never
repented at leisure.

She was thoroughly loyal-hearted and true as a wife and mother; brusque
and blunt, holding all fine things and fine people in supreme contempt.
And yet, according to the perversity of women-kind, she spoiled and
indulged the son whose love of fine things seemed likely to be his bane,
and brought perpetual trouble upon his good and honourable father.

To make bread and cakes, to skim milk, churn butter, at a pinch, and
make all the sweet, cooling drinks for the summer, and elderberry wine
for the winter, were domestic duties in which Mrs. Falconer gloried. She
would put on a large apron and a pair of dusting-gloves every morning
and go the round of the parlours, and rub the old mahogany chair-backs
and bureau with vigour, sprinkle the tea-leaves on stated days, and
follow one of her stout maid-servants, as they swept the carpets on
their knees, with dustpan and brush, and remove every suspicion of
"fluff" from every corner or crevice where it might be supposed to
accumulate.

While her children were young these household duties which their mother
took upon herself, were considered as a matter of course, but with added
years came added wisdom, to some of them at least, and Melville, her
eldest son, and her great darling and idol, began to show unmistakable
signs of annoyance, at his mother's household accomplishments.

He was at home now, and a stormy scene the night before had deepened the
lines on the squire's brow; and hard things Melville had said were as
sharp swords to his mother's soul. She was not particularly sensitive,
it is true; by no means thin-skinned, or laying herself out--as is the
fashion of some women of her temperament, to take offence. Still,
Melville had succeeded the night before in wounding her in her tenderest
place, reminding her that while his father's pedigree could be stretched
out to meet the royal blood of the Saxon kings, the race of sturdy
yeomen, from which his mother came, had no blue blood in their veins and
were sons of the soil.

There is an old saying that "sharper than a serpent's tooth is an
ungrateful child;" and Mrs. Falconer was still smarting from the wound
given her the evening b