"And you with him."
"And I with him. I should like to see if a wife could not persuade him to stay at home."
"I guess you have petted him too much," said Mrs. Evelyn, slyly.
"I cannot have petted him too much, for he has never disappointed me."
"No, of course not; but it seems you find it difficult to lead him."
"No one ever succeeded in doing that," said Mrs. Carleton, with a smile, that was anything but an ungratified one. "He never wanted driving, and to lead him is impossible. You may try it; and while you think you are going to gain your end, if he thinks it worth while, you will suddenly find that he is leading you. It is so with everybody in some inexplicable way."
Mrs. Evelyn thought the mystery was very easily explicable, as far as the mother was concerned; and changed the conversation.
CHAPTER VI.
To them life was a simple art
Of duties to be done,
A game where each man took his part,
A race where all must run;
A battle whose great scheme and scope
They little cared to know,
Content, as men-at-arms, to cope
Each with his fronting foe.
MILNES.
On so great and uncommon an occasion as Mr. Ringgan's giving a dinner-party, the disused front parlour was opened and set in order; the women-folks, as he called them, wanting the whole back part of the house for their operations. So when the visitors arrived, in good time, they were ushered into a large square, bare-looking room a strong contrast even to their dining-room at the Pool which gave them nothing of the welcome of the pleasant farm-house kitchen, and where nothing of the comfort of the kitchen found its way but a very strong smell of roast pig. There was the cheerless air of a place where nobody lives, or thinks of living. The very chairs looked as if they had made up their minds to be forsaken for a term of months; it was impossible to imagine that a cheerful supper had ever been laid upon the stiff, cold-looking table, that stood with its leaves down so primly against the wall. All that a blazing fire could do to make amends for deficiencies, it did; but the wintry wind that swept round the house shook the paper window-shades in a remorseless way; and the utmost efforts of said fire could not prevent it from coming in, and giving disagreeable, impertinent whispers at the ears of everybody.