The breakfast-table at the Hook was not a particularly quiet scene. The children were all in high spirits in the freshness of the morning, and the toys and Christmas presents, though not very fine or expensive, had still novelty to recommend them. Little Molly, before she was lifted up to her high-chair, working away conscientiously and gravely with a large rattle, held at the length of her little arm, while her next little brother drew over the carpet a cart fitted up with some kind of mechanism which called itself music; and Horry flogged his big wooden horse, and little Dick added a boom upon his drum, made a combination of noises which might well have shut out all external sounds. This tumult, indeed, calmed when father came in, when the ringleaders were lifted up on their chairs, and another kind of commotion, the sound of spoons and babble of little voices, began. What other noise could be heard through it? Mab did not think she could have heard anything, scarcely the approach of an army. But the ears of the family were used to it, and had large capabilities. When Martha came in with a fresh supply of milk and a countenance more ruddy than usual, her mistress put the question directly which so much embarrassed the young woman.

“Martha, was that your father’s voice I heard? Is there anything wrong at home?”

“No, ma’am—my lady,” said Martha, in her confusion stumbling over the new title which she was in fact more particular about than its possessor.

“What does he want, then, so early in the morning? I hope your mother is not ill?”

“Oh, no, my lady.” Martha grew redder and redder, and lingered like a messenger who does not know how to deliver a disagreeable commission, turning her tray round and round in her hands.

“It is me, no doubt, that Crockford wants. If it’s nothing very particular he can come here.”

“Oh, no, sir; oh, please, Sir Edward, no, it ain’t you—”

“Then who is it, Martha? some one here it must be.”

“Please, Sir Edward!—please, my lady—I don’t think as it’s no one here at all; it’s only a fancy as he’s took in his head. Oh,” cried the girl, her eyes moist with excitement, her plump cheeks crimson, “don’t listen to him, don’t give any heed to him! it’s all just fancy what he says.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Martha? has John Baker got into trouble? Edward, go and see what is wrong,” said Lady Penton, placidly. She was very kind, but after all, Molly’s bread and milk, and the egg which was ordered for little Jack because he was delicate, were of more immediate importance than Martha’s love-affairs. Sir Edward was perhaps even more amiable in this respect than his wife. Old Crockford was a favorite in his way, and had often amused a weary afternoon when the horizon at the Hook was very limited and very dull. And now even Mab could hear, through the chatter of the children, the sound of some one talking, loud but indistinct, outside. At that moment, with the usual cruelty of fate, a pause took place in the domestic murmur, and suddenly Walter’s voice became audible, crying,

“Hush! Don’t speak so loud.”

The door had been left ajar by Martha, and these words, so unexpected, so incomprehensible, fell into the simple warm interior, unconscious of evil, like a stone into the water.

“Go and see what it is, Edward,” Lady Penton repeated, growing a little pale. The family to which for so long a time nothing had happened had got to a crisis, when anything might happen, and new events were the order of the day.

Sir Edward, who had been going with great composure, hurried his steps a little, and, what was more, closed the door behind him; but it can not be said that he anticipated anything disagreeable. When he got out into the hall, however, he was startled by the sight of Walter, who was pushing Crockford into the book-room, and repeating in a half whisper,

“Hush, I tell you. Be quiet. What good can it do you to let everybody know?”

“It’s right, Mr. Walter, as your father should know.”

“Not if I satisfy you,” said the boy. “Come in here. They are all at breakfast. Quick. Whatever it is, I am the person—”

Walter’s voice broke off short, and his under-lip dropped with a shock of sudden horror. His father’s hand, preventing the closing of it, was laid upon the book-room door.

“If it is anything that concerns you, Wat, it must concern me too,” Sir Edward said. He did not even now think any more of Walter’s possibilities of ill-doing than of Horry’s. They were still on about the same level to the father’s eyes. He supposed it was some innocent piece of mischief, some practical joke, or, at the worst, some piece of boyish negligence, of which Crockford had come to complain. He followed the two into the room with the suspicion of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He did not quite understand of what mischief his son might have been guilty, but there could be nothing very serious in the matter when old Crockford was the complainant.

“Well,” he said, “old friend, what has my boy done?”

But the sight of Sir Edward and this smiling accost seemed to take the power of speech from Crockford, as well as from Walter. The old man opened his mouth and his eyes; the color faded as far as that was possible out of the streaky and broken red of his cheeks. He began to hook his fingers together, changing them from one twist to another as he turned his face from the father to the son. It was evident that, notwithstanding his half threat to Walter, the presence of Walter’s father was as bewildering to him as to the young man.

“Well, sir,” he said, instinctively putting up his hand to his head and disordering the scanty white locks which were drawn over his bald crown, “I’m one as is lookin’ ahead, so being as I’m an old man, and has a deal of time to think; my occypation’s in the open air, and things goes through of my head that mightn’t go through of another man’s.”

“That is all very well,” said Sir Edward, still with his half smile. “I have heard you say as much a great many times, Crockford, but it generally was followed by something less abstract. What has your occupation and your habit of thought to say to my boy?”

Upon this Crockford scratched his head more and more.

“I was observin’ to Mr. Walter, sir, as a young gentleman don’t think of them things, but as how it’s a good thing to take care; for you never knows what way trouble’s a-going to come. The storm may be in the big black cloud as covers the whole sky, or it may be in one that’s no bigger nor a man’s hand.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” said Sir Edward, impatiently; “I tell you I’ve heard you say that sort of thing a hundred times. Come to the point. What is there between Walter and you?”

“There’s nothing, father—nothing whatever. I haven’t seen Crockford for ages, except on the road. He has done nothing to me nor I to him.”

“Then you’d better be off to your breakfast, and leave him to me,” said the father, calmly.

His mind was as composed as his looks. He felt no alarm about his son, but with a little amusement cast about in his mind how he was to draw out of the old road-mender the probably very small and unimportant thread of complaint or remonstrance that was in him. But Walter showed no inclination to budge. He did not, it would appear, care for his breakfast. He stood with his head cast down, but his eye upon Crockford, not losing a single movement he made. Sir Edward began to feel a faint misgiving, and old Crockford took his colored handkerchief out of his breast and began to mop his forehead with it. It was a cold morning, not the kind of season to affect a man so. What did it all mean?

“Look here,” said Sir Edward, “this can’t go on all day. Crockford, you have some sense on ordinary occasions. Don’t think to put me off with clouds and storms, etc., which you know have not the least effect upon me; but tell me straight off, what has Walter to do with it? and what do you mean?”

“Father,” said Walter, “it’s something about a lodger he has. There is a—young lady living there. I’ve seen her two or three times. She has spoken to me even, thinking, I suppose, that I was a gentleman who would not take any advantage. But the old man doesn’t think so; he thinks I’m likely to do something dishonorable—to be a cad, or—I don’t know what. You know whether I’m likely to be anything of the sort. If you have any confidence in me you will send him away—”

“A young lady!” Sir Edward exclaimed, with amazement.

“And that’s not just the whole of it, sir, as Mr. Walter tells you,” said Crockford, put on his mettle. “I’m not one as calls a young gentleman names; cad and such-like isn’t words as come nat’ral to the likes of me. But as for being a lady, there ain’t no ladies live in cottages like mine. I don’t go against ladies—nor lasses neither, when they’re good uns.”

“What does all this mean? I think you are going out of your senses, Wat—both Crockford and you. Have you been rude to any one?—do you think he has been rude to any one? Hold your tongue, Wat! Come, my man, speak out. I must know what this means.”

“It means that he is trying to make mischief—”

“It means, sir,” said Crockford, in his slow, rural way, taking the words out of Walter’s mouth—“I beg your pardon, Sir Edward. I don’t know as I’m giving you the respect as is your due, though there’s none—I’m bold to say it, be the other who he may—as feels more respect. It means just this, Sir Edward,” he went on, advertised by an impatient nod that he must not lose more time, “as there’s mischief done, or will be, if you don’t look into it, between this young gentleman—as is a gentleman born, sir, and your heir—and a little—a—a—” (Walter’s fiery eye, and a certain threatening of his attitude, as if he might spring upon the accuser, changed Crockford’s phraseology, even when the words were in his mouth)—“a young person,” he said, more quickly, “as is not his equal, and never can be; as belongs to me, sir, and is no more a lady nor—nor my Martha, nor half as good a girl.”

Surprise made Sir Edward slow of understanding—surprise and an absence of all alarm, for to his thinking Walter was a boy, and this talk of ladies, or young persons, was unintelligible in such a connection.

He said, “There is surely some strange mistake here. Walter’s—why, Walter is—too young for any nonsense of this kind. You’re—why, you must be—dreaming, Crockford! You might as well tell me that Horry—”

Here Sir Edward’s eyes turned, quite involuntarily, unintentionally upon Walter, standing up by the mantel-piece with his hands in his pockets, his face burning with a dull heat, his eyes cast down, yet watching under the eyelids every action of both his companions—a nameless air about him that spoke of guilt. He stopped short at the sight: everything in Walter’s aspect breathed guilt—the furtive watch he kept, the dull red of anger and shame burning like a fire in his face; the attitude—his hands in his pockets, clinched as if ready for a blow. The first look made Sir Edward stop bewildered, the second carried to his mind a strange, painful, unpleasant, discovery. Walter was no longer a boy! He had parted company from his father, and from all his father knew of him. This perception flashed across his mind like a sudden light. He gasped, and could say no more.

Crockford took advantage of the pause. “If I may make so bold, sir,” he said, “it’s you as hasn’t taken note of the passage of time. It ain’t wonderful. One moment your child here’s a boy at your knee, the next his heart’s set on getting married—or wuss. That’s how it goes. I’ve had a many children myself, and seen ’em grow up and buried most on ’em. Martha, she’s my youngest, she’s a good lass. As for the lads, ye can’t tell where ye are; one day it’s a peg-top and the next it’s a woman. If I may make so bold, I’ve known you man and boy for something like forty years; and I’m sorry for you, Sir Edward, that I am.”

Sir Edward heard as if he heard it not, the bourdonnement of this raw rustic voice in his ears, and scarcely knew what it meant. He turned to his son without taking any notice. “Walter,” he said, with something keen, penetrating, unlike itself in his voice, “what is this? what is this? I don’t seem to understand it.” He was going to be angry presently, very angry; but in the first place it was necessary that he should know.

“I won’t deceive you, father,” said Walter. “From his point of view I suppose he’s right enough—but that is not my point of view.”

“Mr. Walter,” old Crockford said, beginning one of his speeches. The old man in his patched coat of an indescribable color, the color of the woods and hedgerows, with his red handkerchief in a wisp round his neck, the lock of thin gray hair smoothed over his bald crown, his hat in his old knotted rugged hands, all knuckles and protrusions, came into Sir Edward’s mind, as the companion figure leaning on the mantel-piece had done, like a picture all full of meaning; but he stopped the old man’s slow discourse with a wave of his hand, and turned to his son, impatiently. He had not voice enough in his bewilderment to say, “Go on”—he said it with his hand.

“Well, sir?” said the lad, “I don’t know what I have to say; there are things one man doesn’t tell another, even if it’s his father. There’s nothing in me that is dishonorable, if that is what you mean. If there were, it is her eye I should shrink from first of all.”

Her eye! The father stood confounded, not able to believe his ears. He made one more attempt at a question, not with words, but with a half-stupefied look, again silencing Crockford with his hand.

“I tell you, father,” cried Walter, with irritation, “there are things one man doesn’t tell another, not even if—” He was pleased, poor boy, with that phrase; but the examination, the discovery was intolerable to him. He gave a wave of his hand toward Crockford, as if saying, “Question him—hear him—hear the worst of me!” with a sort of contemptuous indignation; then shot between the two other men like an arrow, and was gone.

“Things one man doesn’t tell to another, even if it’s his father.” One man to another! was it laughable, was it tragical? Sir Edward, in the confusion of his soul, could not tell. He looked at Crockford, but not for information; was it for sympathy? though the old stone-breaker was at one extremity of the world and he at the other. He felt himself shaking his head in a sort of intercommunion with old Crockford, and then stopped himself with a kind of angry dismay.

“If you’ve anything to say on this subject, let me have it at once,” he said.

“I can talk more freely, sir, now as he’s gone. That young gentleman is that fiery, and that deceived. The young uns is like that. Sir Edward; us as is older should make allowances, though now and again a body forgets. I’m one that makes a deal of allowances myself, being a great thinker, Sir Edward, in my poor way. Well, sir, it’s this, sir—and glad I am as you’re by yourself and I can speak free. She’s nobody no more nor I am. She’s a little baggage, that’s what she is. How she come to me was this. A brother of mine, as has been no better than what you may call a rollin’ stone all his life, and has done a many foolish things, what does he do at last but marry a woman as had been a play-actress, and I don’t know what. They say as she was always respectable—I don’t know. And she had a daughter, this little baggage as is here, as was her daughter, not his, nor belonging to none of us. But her mother, she bothered me to ’ave ’er, to take her out of some man’s way as wanted to marry her, but his friends wouldn’t hear of it. And that’s how it is. How she came across Mr. Walter is more than I can tell. That’s just how things happens, that is. You or me, Sir Edward, begging your pardon, sir, it’s a thing that don’t occur to the likes of us; but when a young gentleman is young and tender-hearted, and don’t know the world—The ways of Providence is past explaining,” Crockford said.

Sir Edward stood with that habitual look in his face of a man injured and aggrieved, and full of a troubled yet mild remonstrance with fate, and listened to all this only half hearing it. He heard enough to understand in a dull sort of way what it was which had happened to his boy, a thing which produced upon him perhaps a heavier effect than it need have done by reason of the vagueness in which it was wrapped, the blurred and misty outlines of the facts making it so much more considerable. It was not what Crockford said it was, not the mere discovery that his son had got into a foolish “entanglement,” as so many have done before him, with some village girl, that produced this effect upon him. It was Walter’s words so strangely dislocating the connection between them, cutting the ground from under his feet, changing the very foundations of life; “things one man doesn’t tell to another”—one man!—to another. He kept saying it over in his mind with a bewilderment that kept growing, a confusion which he could not get right—one man, to another. It was this he was thinking of, and not what Crockford had said, when he went back to the dining-room, where all the children had finished breakfast, and his wife met him with a look so full of surprise. “What has kept you, Edward? everything is cold. Have you sent Wat out for anything? Has anything happened?” she said.