"Hush! Fred, your father would be displeased if he heard you talk in such a manner."
"No one can hear me but yourself, mother, or you may be sure I should not say a word."
"Tell me about Mark's manners, Fred. I have seen little of him. He is very shy, is he not?"
"Yes, but he has really nice manners. Old Mr. Walthew, though homely and countrified, had nothing coarse or uncouth about him."
"Then you think Mark will behave nicely if I ask him here?"
"No fear of that. Do ask him, mother. It will be a real kindness to him to bring him amongst younger children. He is so much too old for fourteen," said Fred.
Mark was accordingly invited to Mr. Mitcheson's, and there he entered on a new and hitherto undreamed-of life. Mrs. Mitcheson did the wisest and kindest thing possible by handing him over to the tender mercies of her younger children; for she had a very populous nursery, and Mark soon became an immense favourite with them all.
In the Walthews' home at Grimblethorpe there was hardly an article of furniture that had not done duty for two or three generations. This said much both for the makers and users thereof, but little for the good taste of either. Everything was hard, bare, and uncompromising, though exquisitely clean and orderly. Nothing ever seemed to wear out or get broken in Barbara's careful hands.
After Mark became familiar with the handsome table appointments, soft carpets, fine pictures, and furniture which combined beauty of form with comfort in use, he became painfully sensible of the bareness and ugliness of his home surroundings. How he longed to break those impossible animals in brown and white pottery which ornamented (?) the parlour mantelshelf—how he wished to remove the china mugs, with "A present from Blackshore" in gilt letters on their sides, from the rank of decorations to the crockery shelf in the cupboard!
Mark compared the hard Windsor chairs with printed patchwork covers, and the hearthrug made of scraps of cloth sewed on a canvas foundation, with the velvet-seated furniture, of which, at first, he had been almost afraid to make use at Mr. Mitcheson's. But there all the beautiful things were in constant use, and in his own home, the best, where all were ugly, might only be brought out on rare occasions.