"Ah! poetry is a good thing when it is kept in its right place."
"I have been learning a long poem called 'Edith,' and I repeat it when I am darning stockings, picking up a stitch for every word. Don't you understand, father?"
"I never darned a stocking," he said, laughing.
"Ah! happy father! Mother has now given me six pairs of Melville's new socks, to strengthen the heels. In and out, in and out with the long needle; I have to try very hard not to grumble, so I say 'Edith' as a comfort, and to help me on."
'The woods—oh! solemn are the boundless woods
Of the great Western world when day declines,
And louder sounds the roll of distant floods,
More deep the rustling of the solemn pines;
When darkness gathers o'er the stilly air,
And mystery seems o'er every leaf to brood,
Awful it is for human heart to bear
The weight and burden of the solitude.'
"Father," she said, suddenly stopping, "you are thinking of something that troubles you. I know it by the deep line on your forehead, between your eyes. May I know, father?"
"Well, Sunshine, I am troubled about Melville; he wants to go and see the world, he says. I have given him as good an education as befits his station in life. He has made little use of it; and the bills for the last term at Oxford have been enormous."
"How shameful!" Joyce exclaimed.
"Things are so different from what they were when I was a boy," the squire said. "Why, I never dreamed of anything beyond doing my duty here. I took the farming business off your grandfather's shoulders before I was five-and-twenty. I was his steward, as Melville ought to be mine, and leave me free. As it is, I have to pay Watson, and look into everything myself, when I have a son of three-and-twenty, who ought to do all this for me. I suppose it can't be helped," the squire said, stretching out his legs, and taking up the gun which had been resting against the bench, "and as far as I can see the younger boys will be very little, if any, better than Melville."
"Oh! yes, father. Ralph will do anything you wish, I know; and Hal and Bunny are very good at school. Remember what the master said of them at Christmas."