"Oh! You forgot it!" exclaimed May, in a tone of disappointment.
"I didn't forget it, I was in the shop, the fellow behind the counter was just going to serve me, when a fine open carriage pulls up at the door, and Sir Marmaduke flings the horses' reins to his liveried lackey and gets out. Of course, I had to stand back to let the fine gentleman pass, I whose ancestor kept a coach-and-six, when he, maybe, was a-running barefoot behind it!" Mytton looked unutterable scorn as he spoke. "He'd come to ask after the yellow satin he'd ordered for his drawing-room curtains; yellow satin, forsooth! Every yard of it costing as much as I'd earn in a week by my labour! I didn't choose to stand there waiting till a sneak of a shopman had done bowing and fawning and smiling to the great man, whose fortune had sprung up like a mushroom, so I turned on my heel and went out. I'm as good a man as Sir Marmaduke any day, for all his swaggering pride!"
Any one who had seen the sneer on the lip of the peasant might have guessed, and would have guessed truly, that there was more of pride under his blue smock, than swelled the heart of the wealthiest peer in the land. In a savage spirit of discontent, Mytton cut a thick hunch of bread from the loaf which Amy had spread ready for him, and a slice from the piece of stale cheese. There was no grace said before dinner by Mytton, indeed thanksgiving would have keen a mockery from one who looked upon himself as wronged, because he had been born in a station as lowly as that which the Lord of Heaven, when He came to visit earth, had chosen for His own.
Mytton ate his bread and cheese in gloomy silence, which his daughters were afraid to break; the two boys were lingering outside with the donkey. Presently Joe thrust in his flaxen poll at the door, and said, "There be a yellow post chaise coming 'cross the common."
And May ran out to look at it, either because any kind of conveyance was a rarity in that place, or because the presence of one stern irritable man made the cottage uncomfortable.
The thoughts of Amy had wandered far-away from the scene before her, when they were suddenly recalled to earth by an exclamation from her father, who was seated opposite to the open door.
"Why—the chariot is stopping here!" cried Mytton.
A bald-headed gentleman put his head out of the carriage window.
"Can you tell me, little girl, if any one of the name of Mytton lives in this neighbourhood?" said he, addressing himself to May, who stood with her chubby finger in her mouth, staring at instead of answering the stranger.
"That be my father," said Joe, grinning with wonder that any one coming in a yellow chariot should wish to see him.