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.