"Just so; but not to alter the established usages."
Lady Ellis tapped her foot on the soft carpet. "Do you consider that there is any _reason_ in keeping so large a table?"
"There may or may not be. My pleasure is that it shall be kept. My sons have been brought up to it; they would not have it curtailed."
"I think your sons have been brought up to a great deal that is unfitting. One would think they were lords."
"Handsome, noble fellows!" aspirated the justice, with perhaps a little spice of aggravation. "There are not many lords that can match them."
My lady bit her thin lips, a sure sign of rising temper. "It seems to me to be my duty, Mr. Thornycroft, exercising the authority you have vested in me by making me your wife, to control the extravagance hitherto running riot. Opposition, ill-feeling, in the house will not be seemly."
"Neither will I have it," put in the justice.
"I do not see that it can be avoided. I give certain orders. Sinnett, acting under you, opposes them. What can the result be but unseemly contention? How would you avoid it, I ask?"
"By going to live in one of the cottages on the heath, and leaving Isaac--I mean Richard--master of the Red Court Farm."
He spoke promptly--like a man whose mind is fully made up. The prospect of living in a cottage on the heath nearly took my lady's breath away.
"Mr. Thornycroft!" she passionately exclaimed, and then her tone changed to one of peevish remonstrance: "why do you bring up impossibilities? A cottage on the heath!"
Mr. Thornycroft brought down his hand, not in anger but emphasis, on the small breakfast table.
"Were the order of the Red Court upset by unnecessary interference on your part--were I to find that I could be no longer master of it without being subjected to continual opposition, I should surely _quit_ it. If a cottage on the heath were distasteful to you I would take lodgings at Jutpoint."
Lady Ellis sipped her coffee. It did not appear safe to say more. A cottage on the heath, or lodgings at Jutpoint!
"I only wished to put a stop to unnecessary extravagance," she said, in a tone of conciliation.
"No doubt. I give you credit for good motives, of course; but these things must be left to me. The same gentlemen who dined here yesterday evening are coming to supper this. I have made out the bill of fare myself, and given it to Sinnett."