CHAPTER IX.

IT was a pretty, quaint farmhouse, such as might well go with two or
three hundred acres of tolerably good land, tolerably well farmed by
an active old-fashioned tenant, who, though he did not use
mowing-machines nor steam-ploughs nor dabble in chemical experiments,
still brought an adequate capital to his land and made the capital
yield a very fair return of interest. The supper was laid out in a
good-sized though low-pitched parlour with a glazed door, now wide
open, as were all the latticed windows, looking into a small garden,
rich in those straggling old English flowers which are nowadays
banished from gardens more pretentious and; infinitely less fragrant.
At one corner was an arbour covered with honeysuckle, and opposite to
it a row of beehives. The room itself had an air of comfort, and that
sort of elegance which indicates the presiding genius of feminine
taste. There were shelves suspended to the wall by blue ribbons, and
filled with small books neatly bound; there were flower-pots in all
the window-sills; there was a small cottage piano; the walls were
graced partly with engraved portraits of county magnates and prize
oxen; partly with samplers in worsted-work, comprising verses of moral
character and the names and birthdays of the farmer's grandmother,
mother, wife, and daughters. Over the chimney-piece was a small
mirror, and above that the trophy of a fox's brush; while niched into
an angle in the room was a glazed cupboard, rich with specimens of old
china, Indian and English.

The party consisted of the farmer, his wife, three buxom daughters,
and a pale-faced slender lad of about twenty, the only son, who did