beings who might have praised them, and he thought the beruffed,
steel-plated men and high-browed, pearl-decked ladies rather a
dry-looking lot, though he never suffered Annie to say a disparaging
word on the subject.

Annie deeply resented this silent superiority of the Squire's, this
shutting off from her of certain fine points in his garbled scheme of
honour, and she chose to regard Ishmael as the embodiment of this habit.
Had she been left with unrestricted powers as to estate and money she
might have classed herself with her youngest-born and grown to grudge
her other children their existence, but as things were Ishmael was as
much in her way as he was in that of Archelaus. She realised she had
been tricked at the last to satisfy a whim of the Squire's--she would
have been far better off under the old will, which left Cloom to her
eldest son after her. A dishonoured name was all she had gained by the
transaction--a hollow reward, since to her equals it made little
difference, and to her superiors none at all, and when she remembered at
how much pains the special licence had been obtained from the commissary
of the Bishop of Exeter, how she had sent for the Parson the moment the
Squire had finally declared his mind made up, and then for Lawyer
Tonkin, only to be excluded from the conference that followed, Annie
felt her resentment surge up. If it had not been for the fact that the
Parson and Tonkin had been appointed guardians to the boy, Ishmael
would, in all probability, never have lived beyond babyhood. A little
neglect would soon have ended the matter, and even if any local magnate
had bestirred himself to make a fuss, no Cornish jury would have
convicted. All this Boase knew, and he managed to make Annie aware of
the fact that he meant his ward to thrive or he would make trouble, and
she was one of those women who tremble before a spiritual pastor and
master. Therefore she comforted herself by the reflection that at least