piped the two little boys from the horse’s back. “Please, Sir, it’s Plough Monday, we like to keep it up.”
“I have nothing for you,” said her father. “I have quite enough deserving objects for my charity.” He shut the door, and found himself face to face with his daughter.
“Some village clod-hoppers have come begging,” said the clergyman, throwing back his head and giving vent to a cough of irritation. “They actually brought three horses and a plough over the flower-beds and up to the door.”
“They won’t have hurt the flower-beds, father, in this weather, with so much snow on the ground,” said Anne.
“Perhaps not,” he answered, “but they have made a great mess of the snow in front of the house; besides I had wished to measure the footprints of the birds.”
“You might have given them something, they seemed so jolly.”
“Jolly?” Mr. Dunnock’s cough became almost a bark. “It is not my idea of jollity, nor I should have hoped yours, for yokels to black their faces in imitation of Christie minstrels, and come begging for money simply because they are given a day’s holiday on account of the weather.”
“But, father, I think that it is an old custom, and that they expect to be given money.”
Mr. Dunnock gazed at his daughter with real surprise.
“I won’t hear of it. I most strongly disapprove. They may try other people. I am not going to be victimized, or imposed on. Old custom? Remember what the midshipman said in his letter to his mother: ‘Manners they have none, and their customs are beastly.’” The clergyman recovered himself sufficiently to laugh at his own joke, but when his daughter moved towards the door, he said angrily: “I forbid you to encourage them, Anne; the incident is closed and I have sent them away.”