“Hold your tongue, mother,” he said at last, holding one boot at arm’s length and cocking his head sideways the better to admire the effect of the buttering; “I’m going to look decent to-night if no one else is.  And so I don’t mind a-tellen’ ’ee—­” with a sudden slip into the dialect that he studiously trained himself to avoid.  Any lapse of the kind meant that Tom was not in a mood to be trifled with, and Annie turned suddenly to Archelaus.

“Where’s the cheild?” she asked.

“I set’n to gather bullock’s glows for th’ fire—­we shall want more’n furze for to-night,” replied Archelaus.  “Give I a light to take overstairs; ‘tes time I was cleanen’ of myself.  I’m gwain to run with the Neck to-night.”

Annie went obediently to a cupboard and took out a little cup of oil in which a wick lay, the tongue of it drooping over the cup’s rim.  She lit it with a twig from the fire and stood looking at Archelaus for a moment with the cup in her hand.  The footlight effect softened her prominently-boned face and struck some of the over-strong colour from her cheeks—­she showed a faint hint of the prettiness that had attracted the old Squire.

“An’ who is it you’m thinken’ will be at the door for ’ee to kiss when you get in wi’ the Neck?” she asked grimly.

Archelaus shuffled from one big foot to the other.

“Jenifer Keast, maybe?” pursued his mother.

“Happen Jenifer, happen another.  A maid’s a maid,” mumbled the disconcerted Archelaus.

Tom put his boots on the settle and stood up.

“It makes me sick to hear you, Archelaus,” he declared slowly, but with extraordinary venom for a boy of fifteen; “Jenifer Keast!  Have you no sense of who you are that you should think of Jenifer Keast?”

“She’m a fitty maid,” muttered Archelaus.

“A fitty maid!  Listen to the great bufflehead!  She’s fitty enough but with nothing to her but the clothes on her back.  You’ve no call to be leading a maid toall yet.  S’pose you was ever master of Cloom, what would you be wanting with Jenifer Keast?”

“Master o’ Cloom!  That’s plum foolishness.  We all d’knaw I’d be master o’ Cloom if right were right, but there’s the law siden’ wi’ the cheild; devil run off wi’ en!”

“If the devil don’t somebody else might,” said Tom, “and then Cloom’d be mother’s and ours.  Eh, I wish I was the eldest; I’m the only one with a headpiece on me.”

“Th’ cheild’s healthy enough,” grumbled Archelaus.

“My children are all healthy; I never buried but the one between Tom and John-James and the one as never drew breath,” interrupted Annie, “and if the cheild is set up by the law he’s your own flesh and blood.  He would have been as fine a cheild as any of ’ee if he’d kept his place.”

“I’m not saying nothing against the brat,” cried Tom in exasperated tones; “anyone’d think I wanted’n to die by the way you go on at me.  I don’t—­it don’t matter to me, for I’m going to be a lawyer like Mr. Tonkin to Penzance, but Archelaus’ll be a fool if he don’t look higher than Jenifer Keast.”