Home went Blanchard, and kept his meeting secret.  His mother, returning long before him, was already in some argument with Chris concerning the disposal of certain articles of furniture, the pristine splendour of which had been worn off at Newtake five-and-thirty years before.  At Farmer Ford’s death these things passed to his son, and he, not requiring them, had made them over to Damaris.

“They was flam-new when first my parents married and comed to Newtake, many a year ago; and now I want ’em to go back theer.  They’ve seed three generations, an’ I’d be well pleased that a fourth should kick its li’l boots out against them.  They ’m stout enough yet.  Sweat went to building of chairs an’ tables in them days; now it’s steam.  Besides, ’twill save Will’s pocket a tidy bit.”

Chris, however, though she could deny Will nothing, was divided here, for why should her mother part from those trifles which contributed to the ample adornment of her cottage?  Certain stout horsehair furniture and a piano were the objects Mrs. Blanchard chiefly desired should go to Newtake.  The piano, indeed, had never been there before.  It was a present to Damaris from her dead husband, who purchased the instrument second-hand for five pounds at a farm sale.  Its wiry jingle spoke of evolution from harpsichord or spinet to the modern instrument; its yellow keys, from which the ivory in some cases was missing, and its high back, stained silk front, and fretted veneer indicated age; while above the keyboard a label, now growing indistinct, set forth that one “William Harper, of Red Lion Street, Maker of piano-fortes to his late Majesty” was responsible for the instrument very early in the century.

Now Will joined the discussion, but his mother would take no denial.

“These chairs and sofa be yours, and the piano’s my present to Phoebe.  She’ll play to you of a Sunday afternoon belike.”

“An’ it’s here she’ll do it; for my Sundays’ll be spent along with you, of coourse, ’cept when you comes up to my farm to spend ’em.  That’s what I hope’ll fall out; an’ I want to see Miller theer, tu, after he’ve found I’m right and he’m wrong.”

But the event proved that, even in his new capacity as a man of money and a landholder, Will was not to win much ground with Mr. Lyddon.  Two circumstances contributed to the continued conflict, and just as Phoebe was congratulating herself and others upon the increasing amity between her father and her husband matters fell out which caused the miller to give up all hope of Will for the hundredth time.  First came the occupancy of Newtake at a rent Mr. Lyddon considered excessive; and then followed a circumstance that touched the miller himself, for, by the offer of two shillings more a week than he received at Monks Barton, Will tempted into his service a labourer held in great esteem by his father-in-law.