She would not reply to words which showed how completely any conception of herself and her feelings was excluded from her son's inward world.

As she turned round again she said, »I suppose you have been used to great luxury; these rooms look miserable to you, but you can soon make any alteration you like.«

»O, I must have a private sitting-room fitted up for myself down-stairs. And the rest are bedrooms, I suppose,« he went on, opening a side-door. »Ah, I can sleep here a night or two. But there's a bedroom down-stairs, with an anteroom, I remember, that would do for my man Dominic and the little boy. I should like to have that.«

»Your father has slept there for years. He will be like a distracted insect, and never know where to go, if you alter the track he has to walk in.«

»Tat's a pity. I hate going up-stairs.«

»There is the steward's room: it is not used, and might be turned into a bedroom. I can't offer you my room, for I sleep up-stairs.« (Mrs Transome's tongue could be a whip upon occasion, but the lash had not fallen on a sensitive spot.)

»No; I'm determined not to sleep up-stairs. We'll see about the steward's room to-morrow, and I daresay I shall find a closet of some sort for Dominic. It's a nuisance he had to stay behind, for I shall have nobody to cook for me. Ah, there's the old river I used to fish in. I often thought, when I was at Smyrna, that I would buy a park with a river through it as much like the Lapp as possible. Gad, what fine oaks those are opposite! Some of them must come down, though.«

»I've held every tree sacred on the demesne, as I told you, Harold. I trusted to your getting the estate some time, and releasing it; and I determined to keep it worth releasing. A park without fine timber is no better than a beauty without teeth and hair.«

»Bravo, mother!« said Harold, putting his hand on her shoulder. »Ah, you've had to worry yourself about things that don't properly belong to a woman – my father being weakly. We'll set all that right. You shall have nothing to do now but to be grandmamma on satin cushions.«

»You must excuse me from the satin cushions. That is a part of the old woman's duty I am not prepared for. I am used to be chief bailiff, and to sit in the saddle two or three hours every day. There are two farms on our hands besides the Home Farm.«

»Phew-ew! Jermyn manages the estate badly, then. That will not last under my reign,« said Harold, turning on his heel and feeling in his pockets for the keys of his portmanteaus, which had been brought up.

»Perhaps when you've been in England a little longer,« said Mrs Transome, colouring as if she had been a girl, »you will understand better the difficulties there is in letting farms in these times.«

»I understand the difficulty perfectly, mother. To let farms, a man must have the sense to see what will make them inviting to farmers, and to get sense supplied on demand is just the most difficult transaction I know of. I suppose if I ring there's some fellow who can act as valet and learn to attend to my hookah?«

»There is Hickes the butler, and there is Jabez the footman; those are all the men in the house. They were here when you left.«

»O, I remember Jabez – he was a dolt. I'll have old Hickes. He was a neat little machine of a butler; his words used to come like the clicks of an engine. He must be an old machine now, though.«

»You seem to remember some things about home wonderfully well, Harold.«

»Never forget places and people – how they look and what can be done with them. All the country round here lies like a map in my brain. A deuced pretty country too; but the people were a stupid set of old Whigs and Tories.