ther!_
Dressed almost like a girl, and, worst of all, looking almost like a
girl, so slight and white and delicate. Peter recollected that Sir
Timothy had been very particular about his wife's apparel. He liked it
to be costly and dignified, and she had worn stiff silks and poplins
inappropriate to the country, but considered eminently suited to her
position by the Brawnton dressmaker. And her hair had been parted on
her forehead, and smoothed over her little ears. Sir Timothy did not
approve of curling-irons and frippery.

Peter did not know that his mother had cried over her own appearance
often, before she became indifferent; and if he had known, he would
have thought it only typical of the weakness and frivolity which he
had heard attributed to Lady Mary from his earliest childhood.

His aunts were not intentionally disloyal to their sister-in-law;
but their disapproval of her was too strong to be hidden, and they
regarded a little boy as blind and deaf to all that did not directly
concern his lessons or his play. Thus Peter had grown up loving his
mother, but disapproving of her, and the disapproval was sometimes
more apparent than the love.

After breakfast the new squire took an early walk with his guardian,
and inspected a few of the changes which had taken place in the
administration of his tiny kingdom. Though Peter was young and
inexperienced, he could not be blind to the immense improvements made.

He had left a house and stables shabby and tumble-down and out of
repair; rotting woodwork, worn-off paint, and missing tiles had been
painfully evident. Broken fences and hingeless gates were the rule,
and not the exception, in the grounds.

Now all deficiencies had been made good by a cunning hand that had
allowed no glaring newness to be visible; a hand that had matched old
tiles, and patched old walls, and planted creepers, and restored an
almost magical order and comfort to Peter's beautiful old house.

Where Sir Timothy's grumbling tenants had walked to the nearest brook
for water, they now found pipes brought to their own cottage doors.
The home-farm, stables, yards, and cowsheds were drained and paved;
fallen outbuildings replaced, uneven roads gravelled and rolled; dead
trees removed, and young ones planted, shrubberies trimmed, and views
long obscured once more opened out.

Peter did not need the assurances of Mr. Crawley to be aware that his
inheritance would be handed back to him improved a tho