time--Mrs Lloyd?" said Pratt, laying down his
cards.

"Yes, sir, it is," said Mrs Lloyd, severely.

"And you've brought us our candles," said Frank, taking the waiter.
"Thank you, Mrs Lloyd; don't you sit up. Good night."

Pratt's good-humoured, smiling face puzzled the housekeeper. She
allowed herself to be backed out, and the door closed behind her.

Volume 2, Chapter III.

TWO SCENES.

Matters had not been very pleasant in the neighbourhood of Mrs Lloyd
that night Polly had escaped by being a prisoner; but the butler had
been reduced, between fear of his wife and a burst of passion from his
master, into a state of semi-idiocy; while the rest of the servants,
after one or two encounters, had had a meeting, and declared--being, for
the most part, newly engaged in consequence of the young heir's return--
that if that woman was to do as she liked in the house, they'd serve
their month and then go.

But it was on retiring for the night that the butler came in for the
full torrent of his wife's anger.

"It sha'n't go on!" she exclaimed, fiercely, as she banged a chair down
in the centre of the room, and seated herself. "Here do I stop till
every light's out. That boy whom we worshipped almost, who's been our
every thought, to come home at last like a prodigal son--backwards, and
begin to waste his patrimony in this way."

"'Sh! 'sh!" said the butler.

"'Sh yourself!" exclaimed Mrs Lloyd, angrily.

"But, my dear, he's master here," the butler ventured to say.

"Is he indeed!" exclaimed Mrs Lloyd. "I'll see about that."

"Oh, for goodness' sake--for Heaven's sake--pray don't do anything rash,
Martha," said the butler, imploringly. "Think--think of the
consequences."

"Consequences--you miserable coward, you; I haven't patience with you."

"But we are old now, Martha; and what could we do if anything happened
to us here? Pray, pray think. After thirty years in this place; and we
should never get another. Pray, pray don't speak."

"Hold your tongue! Do you think, after bringing him up and rearing him
as we did when he was delicate, and nursing him through measles and
scarlatina, and making a man of him as we have, taking care of the
pence, and saving and scratching together, that I'm going to be trampled
under foot by him?"

"But, Martha--"

"Hold your tongue, I say. Bringing home here his evil companions, for
whom nothing's good enough; and they must have the best wines, and turn
my dining-r