new place.

Stephen was sitting in the upstairs room scratching his head over his
accounts, whilst his old mother sat dozing, with her knitting fallen on
to her lap by the fire. The window was open, and all the sound and smells
of the farm came into the room. The room was an old one with brown oaken
rafters and whitewashed walls, a long oaken table down the middle of it,
and a view over the farmyard and the sweeping fields beyond it, lost at
last, in the distant purple hills. Peter was given a chair opposite the old
lady, who was nearly eighty, and wore a beautiful white cap, and she woke
up and talked incessantly, because she was very garrulous by nature and
didn't care in the least to whom she talked. Peter politely listened to
what she had to say, although he understood little of it, and his eyes were
watching for the moment when the accounts should be finished and Stephen
free.

"Ay," said the old lady, "and it were good Mr. Tenement were the rector
in those days, I remember, and he gave us a roaring discourse many's the
Sunday. Church is not what it was, with all this singing and what not and
the clothes the young women wear--I remember..."

But Stephen had closed his books with a bang and given his figures up in
despair. "I don't know how it is, boy," he said, "but they're at something
different every time yer look at 'em--they're one too many for me, that's
certain."

One of Stephen's eyes was still nearly closed, and both eyes were black and
blue, and his right cheek had a bad bruise on it, but Peter thought it was
wiser not to allude to the encounter. The farm was exceedingly interesting,
and then there was dinner, and it was not until the meal had been cleared