"Yes, I believe ye. That's just it. I KNOW Grace will gradually sink
down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, and
feel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife. But I can't bear the
thought of dragging down to that old level as promising a piece of
maidenhood as ever lived--fit to ornament a palace wi'--that I've taken
so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her white hands getting redder every
day, and her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl in talking, and
her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock shail and wamble!"

"She may shail, but she'll never wamble," replied his wife, decisively.

When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late;
not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence
as discomposed by these other reflections.

The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. "You used to
complain with justice when I was a girl," she said. "But I am a woman
now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is something
else!" Instead of sitting down she went outside the door.

He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is
in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped
the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too
elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated
mood. Melbury followed her. She had rambled on to the paddock, where
the white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties and
thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable family of
sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney,
preening themselves in the rays of the sun.