"Poor dear little birdie," Joyce said, stroking the soft feathers. "Oh! Piers, why must everything die? It seems so hard. And this is the puzzle, that we – you and I – may die to-day, next week, any day; and yet we don't really behave as if we believed it. I feel on a morning like this, for instance, so full of life, it is so delicious to live, and as if I never could die. It is so beautiful to be living, so sad to be dead! To think, Piers, of this little bird singing sweetly – "
"Sparrow-hawks don't sing very sweetly; they chirrup and whistle," Piers interrupted.
"Ah, well, he thought he sang sweetly, and so did his mother; so it came to the same thing. Poor little sweet." And Joyce held the little lifeless bird against her rounded chin and pressed her lips upon it.
Suddenly Piers said:
"What is wrong about Melville; there's something fresh, for I heard my mother talking about it before I was up."
"He says he won't come here and take care of the farm. He wants to travel."
"Well, I don't blame him for that," said Piers.
"But his debts have hampered father dreadfully I know, and he does so detest his fine gentleman airs. It seems to me," said Joyce, vehemently, "to be ashamed of a father like ours is – Oh! I have no word bad enough, and Melville is ashamed, and he does not like mother looking after the dairy and the butter."
"Well," said Piers, tapping his crutch upon the ground, "I think mother does fidget and worry too much in the house and about the place; but it is her way, and no one could alter it."
"I don't know that I wish to alter it," Joyce said, hotly. "Mother has done so much for us, and I hate to think she is slighted by her children. Melville does slight her, and when he talks in that drawling, affected voice, and ties his starched cravats twenty times, and flings them down again if the bow is crooked. I despise him, and that is the truth."
Piers shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, we must go back to breakfast," he said; "I am hungry, and it must be nearly eight o'clock."
The brother and sister walked slowly towards the house, and as they crossed the lawn, from which the sun had kissed away all the dewdrops, a bell over the stables rang, and a little alert figure appeared in the porch.
"Joyce, Joyce! What are you dawdling for? It is past eight o'clock. Getting your feet drenched with the dew, I'll warrant. No, don't bring any dead birds here, Piers; I won't have it. The house is just like a pigsty with all your rubbish. Take it round to the back kitchen. I have a pretty hard morning's work before me, and you must lend a hand, Joyce, I can tell you."
"Father said I was to go with him to Wells, mother, and do your shopping."
"Well, that won't be till eleven o'clock. There's time enough first to help me to give out the stores and get the linen aired for the boys' room and the spare bedroom, and you forget, I suppose, that your brothers are coming home for the holidays on Friday, and this is Wednesday. I shall be all behindhand, if I don't look out. I wish Melville's fine gentleman visitor farther!"
Mrs. Falconer spoke rapidly, and in rather a high key. Her accent was decidedly 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 before, when she began to dispense the excellent breakfast, laid in a large, cool hall at the back of the manor, which was connected, by a square opening in the thick wall, with the kitchen.
The squire, who was generally so jovial and cheery, ate his cold pressed beef and drank his glass of "home-brew" in silence. He professed to be engrossed with a Bath paper several days old, and did not invite conversation.
Piers played with some bread-and-milk his mother set before him: his appetite was never good; but Joyce despatched hot rolls and ham with a great appetite, which I am afraid would shock some of our modern notions nowadays.
Tea and coffee were not the staple beverages at breakfast in those times; but when the heavier part of the meal was over Joyce handed her father a fragrant cup, with some thin toast done to a turn, for which Mrs. Falconer called from the kitchen through the window, communicating with it, and fitted with a sliding shutter, which was promptly closed when the tray had been received from the hands of one of the maids.
"So you are thinking of going into Wells to-day, Arthur?" Mrs. Falconer said when, breakfast drawing to a conclusion, she began to pile the plates together, and put all the scraps on one, for the benefit of Nip and Pip, who had been lying in the window-seat for the past half-hour in a state of suppressed excitement, with their noses on their paws, and their eyes fixed upon that end of the table where their mistress presided.
The noise made by the piling up of the plates was now a decided movement, and Nip and Pip began to wriggle and leap, and finally subside on their hind legs as Joyce called out: "Trust, Nip! trust, Pip!" and then, after what she considered a due time spent in an erect position, the plate was put down before them, and its contents vanished in a twinkling.
"Well, Joyce, will you be ready by eleven o'clock?" Mr. Falconer asked as he left the room.
Joyce was silent, and her mother said:
"Yes, yes, she shall be ready; if she is brisk she can get through all I want." Then Mrs. Falconer began to put all the silver into a wooden bowl, and rubbed it herself with the washleather when it was dried.
She had just finished this part of her daily routine when the door opened and her son Melville came in. His appearance would be ridiculous in the eyes of the dandies of to-day, but in his own, at least, it was as near perfection as possible.
His hair was curled in tight and very-much-oiled curls on his forehead and round his ears. He wore a high neckcloth, tied evidently with much care, supporting his retreating chin. His coat was of Lincoln green, very short in the waist, with large silver buttons, and turned back with a wide collar to display two waistcoats, the white one only showing an edge beyond the darker one of deep salmon-colour, which opened to set off a frilled shirt. The trousers were tight, and caught at the ankles by straps, and his shoes