Mary Ann Thornycroft sat in the large, luxurious, comfortable drawing-room of the Red Court Farm. The skies without were grey and wintry, the air was cold, the sea was of a dull leaden colour; but with that cheery fire blazing in the grate, the soft chairs and sofas scattered about, the fine pictures, the costly ornaments, things were decidedly bright within. Brighter a great deal than the young lady\'s face was; for something had just occurred to vex her. She was leaning back in her chair; her foot, peeping out from beneath the folds of her flowing dress, impatiently tapping the carpet: angry determination written on every line of her countenance. Between herself and Richard there had just occurred a passage at arms--as is apt to be the case with brother and sister, when each has a dominant and unyielding will.

At home for good, Miss Thornycroft had assumed her post as mistress of the house in a spirit of determination that said she meant to maintain it. The neighbours came flocking to see the handsome girl, a woman grown now. She had attained her nineteenth year. They found a lady-like, agreeable girl, with Cyril\'s love for reading, Isaac\'s fair skin and beautiful features, and Richard\'s resolute tone and lip. Very soon, within a week of her return, the servants whispered to each other that Miss Thornycroft and her brothers had already begun their quarrelling, for both sides wanted the mastery. They should have said her brother--very seldom indeed was it that Isaac interfered with her--Cyril never.

She had begun by attempting to set to rights matters that probably never would be set right; regularity in regard to the serving of the meals. They set all regularity at defiance, especially on the point of coming in to them. They might come, or they might not; they might sit down at the appointed hour, or they might appear an hour after it. Sometimes the dinners were simple, oftener elaborate; to-day they would be alone, to-morrow six or eight unexpected guests, invited on the spur of the moment, would sit down to table; just as it had been in the old days. Mr. Thornycroft\'s love of free-and-easy hospitality had not changed. To remedy this, Mary Anne did not attempt--it had grown into a usage; but she did wish to make Richard and Isaac pay more attention to decorum.

"They cannot be well-conducted, these two brothers of mine," soliloquized Miss Thornycroft, as she continued to tap her impatient foot. "And papa winks at it. I think they must have acquired a love for low companions. I hear of their going into the public-house, and, if not drinking themselves, standing treat for others. Last night they came in to dinner in their velveteen coats, and gaiters all mud--after keeping it waiting for five-and-forty minutes. I spoke about their clothes, and papa--papa took their part, saying it was not to be expected that young men engaged in agriculture could dress themselves up for dinner like a lord-in-waiting. It\'s a shame!"

Richard and Isaac did indeed appear to be rather loose young men in some things; but their conduct had not changed from what it used to be--the change lay in Miss Thornycroft. What as a girl she had not seen or noticed, she now, a young woman come home to exact propriety after the manner of well-conducted young ladies, saw at once, and put a black mark against. Their dog-cart, that ever-favourite vehicle, would be heard going out and coming in at all sorts of unseasonable hours; when Richard and Isaac lay abed till twelve (the case occasionally) Miss Thornycroft would contrive to gather that they had not gone to it until nearly daylight.

The grievance this morning, however, was not about any of these things: it concerned a more personal matter of Miss Thornycroft\'s. While she was reading a letter from Susan Hunter, fixing the day of the promised visit, Richard came in. He accused her of expecting visitors, and flatly ordered her to write and stop their coming. A few minutes of angry contention ensued, neither side giving way in the smallest degree: she said her friends should come, Richard said they should not. He strode away to find his father. The justice was in the four-acre paddock with his gun.

"This girl\'s turning the house upside down," began Richard. "We shall not be able to keep her at home."

"What girl? Do you mean Mary Anne?"

"There\'s nobody else I should mean," returned the young man, who was not more remarkable for courtesy of speech, even to his father, than he used to be. "I\'d pretty soon shell out anybody else who came interfering. She has gone and invited some fellow and his sister down to stay for a week, she says. We can\'t have prying people here just now."

"Don\'t fly in a flurry, Dick. That\'s the worst of you."

"Well, sir, I think it should be stopped. For the next month, you know--"

"Yes, yes, I know," interposed the justice. "Of course."

"After that, it would not so much matter," continued Richard. "Not but that it would be an exceedingly bad precedent to allow it at all. If she begins to invite visitors here at will, there\'s no knowing what the upshot might be."

"I\'ll go and speak to her," said Mr. Thornycroft. "Here, take the gun, Dick."

Walking slowly, giving an eye to different matters as he passed, speaking a word here, giving an order there, the justice went on after the fashion of a man whose mind is at ease. It never occurred to him that his daughter would dispute his will.

"What is all this, Mary Anne?" he demanded, when he reached her. "Richard tells me you have been inviting some people to stay here."

Miss Thornycroft rose respectfully.

"So I have, papa. Susan Hunter was my great friend at school; she is remaining there for the holidays, which of course is very dull, and I asked her to come here for a week. Her brother will bring her."

"They cannot come," said Mr. Thornycroft.

"Not come!"

"No. You must understand one thing, Mary Anne--that you are not at liberty to invite people indiscriminately to the Red Court I cannot sanction it."

A hard look of resentment crossed her face; opposition never answered with the Thornycrofts, Cyril excepted: he was just as yielding as the rest were obstinate.

"I have invited them, papa. The time for the visit is fixed, the arrangements are made."

"I tell you, they cannot come."

"Not if Richard\'s whims are to be studied," returned Miss Thornycroft, angrily, for she had lost her temper. "Do you wish me to live on in this house for ever, papa, without a soul to speak to, save my brothers and the servants? And cordial companions they are," added the young lady, alluding to the former, "out, out, out, as they are, night after night! I should like to know where it is they go to. Perhaps I could find out if I tried."

A fanciful person might have thought that Mr. Thornycroft started. "Daughter!" he cried, in a hoarse whisper, hoarse with passion, "hold your peace about your brothers. What is it to you where they go or what they do? Is it seemly for you, a girl, to trouble yourself about the doings of young men? Are you going to turn out a firebrand amongst us? Take care that you don\'t set the Red Court alight."

The words might have struck her as strange, might indeed have imparted a sort of undefined fear, but that she was so filled with anger and resentment as to leave no room for other impressions. Nevertheless, there was that in her father\'s face and eye which warned her it would not do to oppose him now, and her rejoinder was spoken more civilly.

"Do you mean, papa, that you will never allow me to have a visitor?"

"I do not say that. But I must choose the times and seasons. This companion of yours may come a month later, if you wish it so, very much. Not her brother. We have enough young men in the house of our own. And I suppose you don\'t care for him."

Miss Thornycroft would have liked to say that he was the one for whom she did care--not the sister--but that was inexpedient. A conscious flush dyed her face; which Mr. Thornycroft attributed to pain at her wish being opposed. He had not yet to learn how difficult it was to turn his daughter from any whim on which she had set her will.

"Write to-day and stop their coming. Tell Miss--what\'s the name?"

"Hunter," was the sullen answer.

"Tell Miss Hunter that it is not convenient to receive her at the time arranged, but that you hope to see her later. And--another word, Mary Anne," added Mr. Thornycroft, pausing in the act of leaving the room; "a word of caution; let your brothers alone; their movements are no business of yours, neither must you make it such. Shut your eyes and ears to all that does not concern you, if you want to live in peace under my roof."

"Shut my eyes and ears?" she repeated, looking after him, "that I never will. I can see how it is--papa has lived so long under the domineering of Richard that he yields to him as a habit. It is less trouble than opposing him. Richard is the most selfish man alive. He thinks if we had visitors staying at the court, he must be a little more civilized in dress and other matters, and he does not choose to be so. For no other reason has he set his face against their coming; there can be no other. But I will show him that I have a will as well as he, and as good a right to exercise it."

Even as Miss Thornycroft spoke, the assertion, "there can be no other," rose up again in her mind, and she paused to consider whether it was strictly in accordance with facts. But no; look on all sides as she would, there appeared to be no other reason whatever, or shadow of reason. It was just a whim of Richard\'s; who liked to act, in small things as in great, as though he were the master of the Red Court Farm--a whim which Miss Thornycroft was determined not to gratify.

And, flying in the face of the direct command of her father, she did not write to stop her guests.

The contest had not soothed her, and she put on her things to go out. The day was by no means inviting, the air was raw and chill, but Miss Thornycroft felt dissatisfied with home. Turning off by the plateau towards the village, the house inhabited by Tomlett met her view. It brought to her remembrance that the man was said to have received some slight accident, of which she had only heard a day or two ago. More as a diversion to her purposeless steps than anything else, she struck across to inquire after him. Mrs. Tomlett, an industrious little woman with a red face and shrill voice, as you may remember, stood at the kitchen table as Miss Thornycroft approached the open door, peeling potatoes. Down went the knife.

"Don\'t disturb yourself, Mrs. Tomlett. I hear your husband has met with some hurt. How was it done?"

For a woman of ordinary nerve and brain, Mrs. Tomlett decidedly showed herself wanting in self-possession at the question. It seemed to scare her. Looking here, looking there, looking everywhere like a frightened bird, she mumbled out some indistinct answer. Miss Thornycroft had seen her so on occasions before, and as a girl used to laugh at her.

"When did it happen, Mrs. Tomlett?"

"Last week, miss; that is, last month--last fortnight I meant to say," cried Mrs. Tomlett, hopelessly perplexed.

"What was the accident?" continued Miss Thornycroft. "Well, it was a--a--a pitching of himself down the stairs, miss."

"Down which stairs? This house has no stairs."

Mrs. Tomlett looked to the different points of the room as if to assist her remembrance that the house had none.

"No, miss, true; it wasn\'t stairs. He got hurted some way," added the woman, in a pang of desperation. "I never knowed clear how. When they brought him home--a carrying of him--his head up, as one might say, and his legs down, my senses was clean frightened out o\' me: what they said and what they didn\'t say, I couldn\'t remember after no more nor nothing. May be \'twas out o\' the tallet o\' the Red Court stables he fell, miss: I think it was."

Miss Thornycroft thought not; she should have heard of that. "Where was he hurt?" she asked. "In the leg, was it not?"

"\'Twas in the arm, miss," responded Mrs. Tomlett. "Leastways, in the ankle."

The young lady stared at her as a natural curiosity. "Was it in both, Mrs. Tomlett?"

Well, yes, Mrs. Tomlett thought it might be in both. His side also had got grazed. Her full opinion was, if she might venture to express it, that he had done it a climbing up into his boat. One blessed thing was--no bones was broke.

Miss Thornycroft laughed, and thought she might as well leave her to the peeling of the potatoes, the interruption to which essential duty had possibly driven her senses away.

"At any rate, whatever the hurt, I hope he will soon be about again," she kindly said, as she went out.

"Which he is a\'most that a\'ready," responded Mrs. Tomlett, standing on the threshold to curtsey to her guest.

No sooner was the door shut than Tomlett, a short, strong, dark man, with a seal-skin cap on, and his right arm bandaged up, came limping out of an inner room. The first thing he did was to glare at his wife; the second, to bring his left hand in loud contact with the small round table so effectually that the potatoes went flying off it.

"Now what do you think of yourself for a decent woman?"

Mrs. Tomlett sat down on a chair and began to cry. "It took to me, Ben, it did--it took to me awful," she said, deprecatingly, in the midst of her tears; "I never knowed as news of the hurt had got abroad."

"Do you suppose there ever was such a born fool afore as you?" again demanded Mr. Tomlett, in a slow, subdued, ironical, fearfully telling tone.

"When she come straight in with the query--what was Tomlett\'s hurt and how were it done?--my poor body set on a twittering, and my head went clean out o\' me," pleaded Mrs. Tomlett.

"A pity but it had gone clean off ye," growled the strong-minded husband; "\'tain\'t o\' no good on."

"What were I to say, took at a pinch like that? I couldn\'t tell the truth; you know that, Tomlett."

"Yes, you could; you might ha\' told enough on\'t to satisfy her:--\'He was at work, and he fell and hurt hisself.\' Warn\'t that enough for any reasonable woman to say? And if she\'d asked where he fell, you might ha\' said you didn\'t know. Not you! He \'throwed hisself down the stairs,\' when there ain\'t no stairs to the place; he \'fell out o\' the tallet;\' he \'done it a climbing up into his boat!\' Yah!"

"Don\'t be hard upon me, Tomlett, don\'t."

"\'And the hurt,\' she asked, \'was that in the leg?\'" mercilessly continued Mr. Tomlett. "\'No, it weren\'t in the leg, it were in the arm, leastways, in the ankle,\' says you; and a fine bobbin o\' contradiction that must ha\' sounded to her. Yah again! Some women be born fools, and some makes theirselves into \'em."

"It were through knowing you\'d get a listening, Tomlett. Nothing never scares the wits out o\' me like that. When I see the door open a straw\'s breadth, I knew your ear was at it; and what with her afore me talking, and you ahind me listening, I didn\'t know the words I said no more nor if it wasn\'t me that spoke \'em. Do what I will, I\'m blowed up."

"Blowed up!" amiably rep............