‘Mr Prothero, do you know I have sent Mrs Prothero to bed,’ began Miss Gwynne, advancing towards him; ’she looks so very ill and unlike herself that I am sure you must be careful of her for a time.’

’All that ungrateful, good-for-nothing daughter of ours, Miss Gwynne.  What would she care if she were to kill her mother?  I know you are a true lady and a kind friend, miss, and have more sense than all the rest of the country put together, so I don’t mind telling you what I think.  Those that disobey their parents’ll be seure to come to a bad end.’

’We will hope the best, Mr Prothero; and you must remember that you have your sons to comfort you.’

’Fine comfort to be seure.  There’s Owen as wild as an untrained colt, and Rowland such a grand man up in London that he ’ont know his own father by-and-by.  Dining with bishops and rectors, and as fine as my lord.  I always told my wife that all Mrs Jonathan’s eddication was too much for us, and so it is turning out.  We shall be left in our old age to shift for ourselves; one son at sea, without a shirt to his back; another preaching upon a hundred a-year—­gentleman Rowland I call him; and the third in a workhouse, maybe.  And all this because brother Jo must needs bring a fine lady amongst us, and with her nothing but grammar-schools, boarding-schools, and colleges.  My wife always spoilt that girl.’

‘Perhaps you helped a little bit, Mr Prothero,’ said Miss Gwynne, smiling, to stop the farmer’s flow of words.  ’But one couldn’t help spoiling poor—­’

‘There, don’t you go for to take her part, miss.  Name o’ goodness, let alone the girl.  Beg pardon for being so rude.’

Here Gladys appeared, who had followed her mistress upstairs.

’Sir, the mistress is very ill.  I think she would like to see you.  Perhaps you had better have a doctor.’

’Never had a doctor in my house since Netta was born, that’s the trouble she brought with her; I’d as soon have an undertaker.  Send you for a doctor, and everybody in the house is seure to be ill.  He’s infectious.  Excuse me, Miss Gwynne, whilst I go and see what’s the matter.’

Miss Gwynne waited until she heard Mr Prothero come down from his wife’s room, calling busily for Owen, who was in the wheat-field, and telling him to go and fetch Dr Richards.  She then called Gladys, and said she should have whatever her mistress could fancy from the Park, and that she would come again in the afternoon and see how she was.

This done, Miss Gwynne went her own erratic way, which led her over stiles, and through fields, and into various cottages, where she alternately scolded, lectured, and condoled, accordingly as she thought their inmates deserved the one or the other.  She rarely left them, however, without giving some substantial proof of the interest she felt in their wants and trials, either by promises of food or clothing, or by money given then and there.  She finally anchored in a pretty school-house that she had lately prevailed on her father to build, close by the Park, where she found Miss Hall patiently superintending the needlework of the girls.  She gave two or three quick nods to the children, and they curtseyed and bowed on her entrance, and then told Miss Hall it was twelve o’clock, and she had had quite enough teaching for one morning.