ell, giving an anxious look
round at the tall clock. "Why, it's gone eight," she went on. "What
_can_ have got him?"

Her eyes rested suspiciously on her husband, who shifted about uneasily.

"Can't you let the lad bide?" he said; "ye'll not rest till ye make him
a greater ninny nor he is by natur. He might as well ha' bin a gell, an
better, for all the good he'll ever be."

"How did he tackle the ploughin'?" asked Mrs Darvell, pausing in the
act of setting aside Frank's supper on the dresser.

"Worser nor ever," replied her husband contemptuously. "He'll never be
good for nowt, but to bide at home an' keep's hands clean. Why, look at
Eli Redrup, not older nor our Frank, an' can do a man's work already."

"Eli Redrup!" exclaimed Mrs Darvell in a shrill tone of disgust; "you'd
never even our lad to a great fullish lout like Eli Redrup, with a head
like a turmut! If Frank isn't just so fierce as some lads of his age,
he's got more sense than most."

"I tell 'ee, he'll never be good for nowt," replied her husband
doggedly, as he resumed his seat in the chimney-corner and lighted his
pipe.

"Onless," he added after a moment's pause, "he comes to be a
schoolmaster; and it haggles me to think that a boy of mine should take
up a line like that."

Mrs Darvell made no answer; but as she washed up the cups and plates
she cast a curious glance every now and then at her husband's silent
figure, for she had a strong feeling that he knew more than he chose to
tell about "our" Frank's absence.

"Our Frank" had more than once been the innocent cause of a serious
difference of opinion between Mr and Mrs Darvell. He was their only
child, and had inherited his father's fair skin and blue eyes, and his
mother's quickness of apprehension; but here the likeness to his parents
ended, for he had a sensitive nature and a delicate frame--things
hitherto unknown in Green Highlands. This did not matter so much during
his childhood, when he earned golden opinions from rector and
schoolmaster in Danecross, as a fine scholar, and one of the best boys
in the choir; but the time came when Frank was thirteen, when he had
gone through all the "Standards," when he must leave school, and begin
to work for his living. It was a hard apprenticeship, for something
quite different from brain-work was needed now, and the boy struggled
vainly against his physical weakness. It was a state of things so
entirely incomprehensible to Mr Darvell, t