a sort of feeling about it which I can't explain. One should always say to oneself, No surrender.' And Peregrine, as he spoke, stood up from his chair, thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets, and shook his head.
Sir Peregrine smiled as he answered him. 'But Perry, my boy, we can't always say that. When the heart and the spirit and the body have all surrendered, why should the voice tell a foolish falsehood?'
'But it shouldn't be a falsehood,' said Peregrine. 'Nobody should ever knock under of his own accord.'
'You are quite right there, my boy; you are quite right there. Stick to that yourself. But, remember, that you are not to knock under to any of your enemies. The worst that you will meet with are folly, and vice, and extravagance.'
'That's of course,' said Peregrine, by no means wishing on the present occasion to bring under discussion his future contests with any such enemies as those now named by his grandfather.
'And now, suppose you dress for dinner,' said the baronet. 'I've got ahead of you there you see. What I've told you to-day I have already told your mother.'
'I'm sure she doesn't think you right.'
'If she thinks me wrong, she is too kind and well-behaved to say so,—which is more than I can say for her son. Your mother, Perry, never told me that I was wrong yet, though she has had many occasions;—too many, too many. But, come, go and dress for dinner.'
'You are wrong in this, sir, if ever you were wrong in your life,' said Peregrine, leaving the room. His grandfather did not answer him again, but followed him out of the door, and walked briskly across the hall into the drawing-room.
'There's Peregrine been lecturing me about draining,' he said to his daughter-in-law, striving to speak in a half-bantering tone of voice, as though things were going well with him.
'Lecturing you!' said Mrs. Orme.
'And he's right, too. There's nothing like it. He'll make a better farmer, I take it, than Lucius Mason. You'll live to see him know the value of an acre of land as well as any man in the county. It's the very thing that he's fit for. He'll do better with the property than ever I did.'
There was something beautiful in the effort which the old man was making when watched by the eyes of one who knew him as well as did his daughter-in-law. She knew him, and understood all the workings of his mind, and the deep sorrow of his heart. In very truth, the star of his life was going out darkly under a cloud; but he was battling against his sorrow and shame—not that he might be rid of them himself, but that others might not have to share them. That doctrine of 'No surrender' was strong within
