“Do you mean to say that Lorna is gone?” asked Annie, in great amazement; yet leaping at the truth, as women do, with nothing at all to leap from.

“Gone.  And I never shall see her again.  It serves me right for aspiring so.”

Being grieved at my manner, she led me in where none could interrupt us; and in spite of all my dejection, I could not help noticing how very pretty and even elegant all things were around.  For we upon Exmoor have little taste; all we care for is warm comfort, and plenty to eat and to give away, and a hearty smack in everything.  But Squire Faggus had seen the world, and kept company with great people; and the taste he had first displayed in the shoeing of farmers’ horses (which led almost to his ruin, by bringing him into jealousy, and flattery, and dashing ways) had now been cultivated in London, and by moonlight, so that none could help admiring it.

“Well!” I cried, for the moment dropping care and woe in astonishment:  “we have nothing like this at Plover’s Barrows; nor even Uncle Reuben.  I do hope it is honest, Annie?”

“Would I sit in a chair that was not my own?” asked Annie, turning crimson, and dropping defiantly, and with a whisk of her dress which I never had seen before, into the very grandest one:  “would I lie on a couch, brother John, do you think, unless good money was paid for it?  Because other people are clever, John, you need not grudge them their earnings.”

“A couch!” I replied:  “why what can you want with a couch in the day-time, Annie?  A couch is a small bed, set up in a room without space for a good four-poster.  What can you want with a couch downstairs?  I never heard of such nonsense.  And you ought to be in the dairy.”

“I won’t cry, brother John, I won’t; because you want to make me cry”—­and all the time she was crying—­“you always were so nasty, John, sometimes.  Ah, you have no nobility of character, like my husband.  And I have not seen you for two months, John; and now you come to scold me!”

“You little darling,” I said, for Annie’s tears always conquered me; “if all the rest ill-use me, I will not quarrel with you, dear.  You have always been true to me; and I can forgive your vanity.  Your things are very pretty, dear; and you may couch ten times a day, without my interference.  No doubt your husband has paid for all this, with the ponies he stole from Exmoor.  Nobility of character is a thing beyond my understanding; but when my sister loves a man, and he does well and flourishes, who am I to find fault with him?  Mother ought to see these things:  they would turn her head almost:  look at the pimples on the chairs!”

“They are nothing,” Annie answered, after kissing me for my kindness:  “they are only put in for the time indeed; and we are to have much better, with gold all round the bindings, and double plush at the corners; so soon as ever the King repays the debt he owes to my poor Tom.”