‘Oh, yes, if you wish it,’ he answered, gruffly, as if vexed at her gratification.

‘I mean, of course, if you can spare me,’ she said, with an air of more reserve.

‘If you wish it, go by all means.  I hope you will.’

‘The Christmas holidays are so near, that we may both go,’ said Isabel; but James still had not recovered his equanimity, and Louis thought it best to begin talking of other things; and, turning to James, launched into the results of his Inglewood crops, and the grand draining plan which was to afford Marksedge work for the winter, and in which his father had become much interested.  But he did not find that ready heed to all that occupied him of which he used to be certain at the Terrace.  Isabel cared not at all for farming, and took no part in ‘mere country squire’s talk;’ and James was too much overburthened with troubles and anxieties to enter warmly into those of others.  Of those to whom Louis’s concerns had been as their own, one had been taken from him, the other two were far away; and the cold ‘yes,’ ‘very good,’ fell coldly on his ear.

The conversation reverted to the school; and here it appeared that two years’ experience had taken away the freshness of novelty, and the cycle of disappointment had begun.  More boys were quitting the school than the new-comers could balance; and James spoke with acute vexation of the impracticability of the boys, and the folly of the parents.  The attendance at his evening lectures had fallen off; and he declared that there was a spirit of opposition to whatever he did.  The boys disobeyed, knowing that they should be favoured at home, and if they were punished, the parents talked of complaints to the trustees.  The Sunday teaching was treated as especially obnoxious:  the genteel mothers talked ridiculously about its resembling a charity-school, the fathers did not care whether their sons went or not, and he had scarcely five boys who appeared there regularly, and of them one was the butcher’s son, who came rather in spite of his parents than with their consent.  Attendance at church was more slack than ever; and when he lectured the defaulters, and gave them additional tasks in the week, it was resented as an injustice.  To crown all, Mr. Ramsbotham had called, and had been extremely insolent about a boy whose ears had been boxed for reading Pickwick in school, under cover of his Latin grammar, and Isabel was almost indignant with Miss Faithfull for having ventured to hint to her that she wished Mr. Frost would be a little more gentle with the boys.

Isabel was fully alive now, and almost as vehement as her husband, in her complaints against his many foes.  There was no lack of sympathy here, indeed, there might be rather too much, for she did not afford the softening influence that James had hitherto found at home.

‘Well, Jem,’ said Louis, at last, ’I think you should keep your hands off the boys.’