"No, dear, no; it would be a pity to wake the baby; how sweet she looks. There will never be any children in the old home now, I am afraid." And Mrs. Falconer sighed.
"I don't think they are wanted," Joyce said; "but perhaps till people have babies they don't know how delightful they are. Piers is laughing at me."
"Not at you. I was only thinking how Gratian and Melville would hate the bother of children about the house."
"They were very kind to us," Joyce said. "It seems to me that we may be very thankful Melville married Gratian."
"Yes, she keeps him in good order."
Mrs. Falconer had still a weak, very weak, place in her heart for Melville, and she said, sharply:
"That's not a becoming way to speak of your eldest brother."
Piers shrugged his shoulders. He took in, more fully than his mother could, the trouble that Melville's conduct had brought upon them all, especially on Ralph—Ralph, who might have done so well in scholarship, now acting as steward to his brother, with less thanks and less pay than he deserved. It irritated Piers to see Melville's self-satisfaction, and to know that from sheer indolence, if Ralph had not come to the rescue, he would have brought the inheritance of his fathers to hopeless ruin.
Melville had his wish now. Gratian took care that their position should be recognised, and they visited at the houses of the neighbouring gentry, where Gratian's ready tact, and powers of fascination, were acknowledged. It became the fashion to enliven a dull, heavy dinner by inviting Mrs. Melville Falconer, who could tell amusing stories, seasoned with French phrases, and listen with apparently deep interest to the stories other people told, whether they related to the weather, the crops, or the fashions.
Joyce saw the cloud on Piers' face, and hastened to say that Ralph had written a very clever treatise on draining land, and that Gilbert thought it would draw people's attention to the subject, from the masterly way in which it was treated.