The squire would have had the cook in and discussed the stock-pot with her for a full hour, but the cook set up her back.  She wouldn’t, no, that she wouldn’t; and the squire found that the cook was mistress of the situation.  She was the only personage who did not pass him with deference.  She tossed her head, and told her fellow-servants audibly that he was a poor, mean-spirited man; and as for missis, she was a regular Tartar—­there!  In this they thoroughly agreed.  The coachman and footman, when out with the carriage, and chancing to get a talk with other coachmen and footmen, were full of it.  He was the meanest master they had ever known; yet they could not say that he paid less wages, or that they were ill-fed—­it was this meddling, peddling interference they resented.  The groom, when he rode into town for the letter-bag, always stopped to tell Ills friends some fresh instance of it.  All the shopkeepers and tradesmen, and everybody else, had heard of it.  But they were none the less obsequious when the squire passed up the street.  The servants were never so glad as when young master came home with the liberal views imbibed in modern centres of learning, and with a free, frank mode of speech.  But miss, the sole daughter, they simply hated; she seemed to have ten times the meanness of her papa, and had been a tell-tale from childhood.  The kitchen said she saved her curl papers to sell as waste paper.

The ‘missis’ was as haughty, as unapproachable, and disdainful as the master was inquisitive; she never spoke to, looked at, nor acknowledged any one—­except the three largest tenants and their wives.  To these, who paid heavily, she was gracious.  She dressed in the very extreme and front of fashion—­the squire himself quite plainly, without the least pretence of dandyism.  Hateful as the village folk thought her hauteur and open contempt for them, they said she was more the lady than the squire was the gentleman.

The squire’s time, when at home, like everything else, was peddled away.  He rode into market one day of the week; he went to church on Sundays with unfailing regularity, and he generally attended the petty sessional bench on a third day.  Upon the bench, from the long standing of his family, he occupied a prominent position.  His mind invariably seized the minutiae of the evidence, and never seemed to see the point or the broad bearings of the case.  He would utterly confuse a truthful witness, for instance, who chanced to say that he met the defendant in the road.  ’But you said just now that you and he were both going the same way; how, then, could you meet him?’ the squire would ask, frowning sternly.  Whether the witness overtook or met the defendant mattered nothing to the point at issue; but the squire, having got a satisfactory explanation, turned aside, with an aggravating air of cleverness.  For the rest of the week the squire could not account for his time.  He sometimes, indeed, in the hunting season, rode to the meet; but he rarely followed.  He had none of the enthusiasm that makes a hunter; besides, it made the horse in such a heat, and would work him out too quick for economy.