he humour of
the observer differed yet more widely from its condition then than did
the landscape from its former hues. In due time they reached a
commanding situation upon the road, from which were visible knots and
plantations of trees on the Enckworth manor. Christopher broke the
silence.

'Lord Mountclere is still alive and well, I am told?'

'O ay. He'll live to be a hundred. Never such a change as has come over
the man of late years.'

'Indeed!'

'O, 'tis my lady. She's a one to put up with! Still, 'tis said here and
there that marrying her was the best day's work that he ever did in his
life, although she's got to be my lord and my lady both.'

'Is she happy with him?'

'She is very sharp with the pore man--about happy I don't know. He was a
good-natured old man, for all his sins, and would sooner any day lay out
money in new presents than pay it in old debts. But 'tis altered now.
'Tisn't the same place. Ah, in the old times I have seen the floor of
the servants' hall over the vamp of your boot in solid beer that we had
poured aside from the horns because we couldn't see straight enough to
pour it in. See? No, we couldn't see a hole in a ladder! And now, even
at Christmas or Whitsuntide, when a man, if ever he desires to be
overcome with a drop, would naturally wish it to be, you can walk out of
Enckworth as straight as you walked in. All her doings.'

'Then she holds the reins?'

'She do! There was a little tussle at first; but how could a old man
hold his own against such a spry young body as that! She threatened to
run away from him, and kicked up Bob's-a-dying, and I don't know what
all; and being the woman, of course she was sure to beat in the long run.
Pore old nobleman, she marches him off to church every Sunday as regular
as a clock, makes him read family prayers that haven't been read in
Enckworth for the last thirty years to my certain knowledge, and keeps
him down to three glasses of wine a day, strict, so that you never see
him any the more generous for liquor or a bit elevated at all, as it used
to be. There, 'tis true, it has done him good in one sense, for they say
he'd have been dead in five years if he had gone on as he was going.'

'So that she's a good wife to him, after all.'

'Well, if she had been a little worse 'twould have been a little better
for him in one sense, for he would have had his own way more. But he was
a curious feller at one time, as we all know