"Oh, heart of stone, are you flesh, and caught
By that which you swore to withstand?"—Tennyson.
"My word, but she's a peach," muttered Mr. Percy Ferris to himself as he rode hastily home through the lanes to lunch. "And old Gaunt's got her! That smoke-dried old curmudgeon! Well, some people have the devil's own luck. Poor little woman. Sold to him, I suppose? Sold, body and soul. And he sits looking as though he would like to shut her up in a harem where no other man but himself could ever set eyes on her. Oh, why wasn't she about in my day? However, one can't have everything, I suppose."
It was as well that he should admit this, for he was considered extremely lucky by most of his neighbours. Beginning life as a veterinary surgeon, he had happened to be about when the late Colonel Coxon departed this life, leaving Josephine, his only daughter, sole heiress of Perley Hatch, a nice little property.
Joey was only nineteen at the time, and was what the Americans, with delicate euphemism, call homely. She had projecting teeth, a freckled skin, little twinkling eyes, and a loud voice. In person she was large and ungainly; but she had her points. A bouncing good humour, a fine seat on horseback, and a real love of children and animals made her more or less popular in the district. Ferris was not a good husband, but he was not actively unkind to her, though he spared no chance of letting her know that, but for her money, he would never have looked her way.
As he entered his home, and passed through the untidy hall, littered with whips, sticks, children's toys, golf clubs and tennis bats, mingled in wild disorder with coats, jerseys, old hats, gardening gloves and aprons, a loud roaring could be heard, and Joey presently came downstairs, her firstborn son, an ugly fat child of about five, tucked under her arm, kicking, fighting, and bellowing.
"Hallo!" said she, perceiving her husband. "I've been giving Tom a good spanking to teach him not to torture things. I can't think what makes 'em such little demons of cruelty. Bill's just as bad. I won't have it, that's flat. You hear, Tom? If ever you hurt anything you're going to get hurt yourself. Comprenny, my son?"
She set Tom on his feet, dusted him down, pushed her untidy hair out of her eyes with one hand, and patted the boy with the other.
"Kiss and make friends," said she. "Here's daddy, and we're going to have dinner."
Tom bore no malice. He gave and received the kiss of amity, and they went into the dining-room, where a huge dish of boiled beef, flanked with carrots, turnips, and suet dumplings steamed upon the board.
A nurse brought down Bill, and seated him on his high chair. Then Ferris, having begun to carve with celerity, could keep his news no longer to himself.