the threshold, and glanced back; but there was no change in the rubicund face. She went into the passage, and slowly closed the door, holding the handle in her hand for a few seconds as she did so. She walked deliberately down the passage, pausing at each step. Before she was at the end of it, a loud voice reached her ear. She joyfully turned back and re-entered the bedroom.

'Yes, David?' she said quietly.

'If the girl is really bad, send her in the cart, or let her have a horse, if you like,' growled Mr Prothero. 'Only I do wish, mother, you would have nothing to do with them Irishers.'

'Thank you, my dear,' said the quiet little woman. 'Then if the rest go away, I may manage about the girl?'

'Do what you like, only get rid of 'em somehow.'

'Thank you.'

'Oh, you needn't thank me! I'd as soon send every one of 'em to jail as not; but I can't stand your puffing and sighing just as if they were all your own flesh and blood.'

'We're all the same flesh and blood, my dear.'

'I'd be uncommon sorry to think so. I've nothing but Welsh flesh and blood about me, and should be loath to have any other, Irish, Scotch, or English either.'

Mrs Prothero disappeared.

'That 'ooman 'ould wheedle the stone out of a mill,' continued the farmer, rubbing his eyes, and deliberately taking off his night-cap, 'and yet she don't ever seem to have her own way, and is as meek as Moses. She has wheedled me out of my Sunday nap, so I suppose I may as well get up. Hang the Irish! There is no getting rid of 'em. She's given 'em a night's lodging, and a supper for so many years, that they come and ask as if it was their due. But I'll put a stop to it, yet, in spite of her, or my name isn't David Prothero.'

When Mr Prothero came forth from his dormitory, he was in his very best Sunday attire. As he walked across the farm-yard in search of his wife, there was an air about him that seemed to say, 'I am monarch of all I survey.' Indeed, few monarchs are as independent, and proud of their independence, as David Prothero of Glanyravon.

He was a tall, muscular man, of some fifty years of age. He was well made, and of that easy, swinging gait, that is rather the teaching of Dame Nature, than of the dancing mistress or posture master. His face was full and ruddy, betokening health, spirits, and that choleric disposition to which his countrymen are said to incline, whether justly or unjustly is not for me to determine. His hair had a reddish tinge, and his whiskers were decidedly roseate, bearing still further testimony to a slight irrascibility of temperament. But he was a good-looking man, in spite of his hair and whiskers, which, as his wife admired them, are not to be despised.

'Where's your mistress, Sam?' roared Mr Prothero across the farm-yard.

'In the barn, master,' answered a man, who was eating bread and cheese on the gate, and swinging his legs pleasantly about.

'Tell her I want her,'

In answer to the summons, immediately appeared his worthy helpmate. She carried a very beautiful half-blown rose in her hand, which, as soon as she approached her husband, she placed carefully in his button-hole, standing on tiptoe to perform this graceful Sunday morning service.

'Thank you, mother,' said Mr Prothero, smiling, and looking down complacently on his little wife.

What went with all his lecture upon the profligacy of Irish beggars? I suppose it was silently delivered from his breast to the rose, for none of it came to his lips, though it was quite ready to be heard when the rose made her appearance.

All the Irish are gone except the girl, Davy, bach' said quiet Mrs Prothero, 'and they are gone to the Overseer to tell him about her, and I will see that she is sent to the workhouse to-night, that is to say if I can.'

'I suppose you fed and clothed the ragged rascals?'

'I just gave them some scraps for breakfast, and indeed their blessings did me good,'

'I should think they must. People that left a dying girl behind 'em.'

'They promised to come back and see after her when the hay-harvest is over. They are going into Herefordshire to get work, and she, poor thing, is looking for her relations in this county, and meant to get work here.'

'Well, I want my breakfast. I promised brother Jonathan to go to church to-day. He is going to preach a charity sermon for the Church Building Society, and wants my shilling. He and Mrs Jonathan are to come to-morrow, you know, my dear. I hope in my heart everything is as fine as fippence, or my lady 'll turn up her nose.'

'I can't make things neater, Davy.'

This was said by Mrs Prothero, in a desponding tone, quite different from her former quiet cheerfulness, and she accompanied the words by rubbing her hands nervously one over the other.

'There now, don't look as if you were going to be smothered. Mrs Jonathan isn't so bad as all that. I wish to goodness Jonathan hadn't married a fine lady. But then she brought him a good fortune, and it's all the better for our children.'

'I don't want her money.'

'But if it wasn't for her, my dear, Rowland would never have had an Oxford edication.'

'I'd as soon he had gone to Lampeter, or been made a good Wesleyan minister, and then he might have been content to stay in Wales, instead of going off to England.'

'There, there! never mind! He'll be a bishop some day; and though you do still incline to the chapel, you'll be proud of that. Now, name o' goodness, let's have some breakfast.'

With this peculiarly Welsh interjection, Mr Prothero turned towards the farm, and, followed by his wife, went to the desired repast.

CHAPTER III.

THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER.

'Nobody has come for that poor girl, Netta, and I have'n't the heart to send her away,' said Mrs Prothero to her only daughter Janetta, towards the close of the Sunday, the morning of which we noticed in the last chapter.

'I am sure, mother, you have been plagued quite enough with her already. You have neither been to church nor chapel, and scarcely eaten a morsel all the day. I can't imagine what pleasure you take in such people.'

'I wouldn't care if your father was at home; but I don't quite like to have her into the house without his leave, and she is not fit to be left in the barn.'

'Into the house, mother! That wild Irish beggar! Why, father would get into a fury, and I'm sure I should be afraid to sleep in the same place with such a creature.'

'Oh, my dear child! when will it please the Lord to soften your heart, and teach you that all men and women are brothers and sisters.'

'Never, I'm sure, in that kind of way.'

Whilst the mother and daughter continue their conversation about Gladys, of which the above is a specimen, we will glance at Janetta Prothero, the spoilt daughter of Glanyravon Farm.

She is decidedly a pretty girl? some might call her a beauty. She has dark eyes, black hair, a clear pink and white complexion, a round, dimpled cheek, a fair neck, a passable nose, and a very red-lipped, pouting mouth. She is small of stature—not much taller than her mother—but so well-formed, that her delicate little figure is quite the perfection of symmetry. Her movements are languid rather than brisk like her mother's, and she either has, or is desirous of having, more of the fine lady in her manners and appearance. We discern, as she talks, more of obstinacy than reason, and more of pride than sense, in her conversation, and the face rather expresses self-will than intellect, although not deficient in the latter.

We are led to suppose, from the appearance of the room in which the mother and daughter are located, that Miss Janetta is somewhat accomplished; more so than young ladies in her position commonly were some thirty or forty years ago. This is a large parlour, with some pretensions to be called a drawing-room. True, the furniture is of old-fashioned mahogany, the