This particular spring day had begun brightly, the morning had been sunny and even warm; but now, as the afternoon wore away, there were dark clouds, with a rising wind and a sharp gusty shower every now and then.  Ellen took a solitary turn in the garden between the showers.  It was market-day; Stephen Whitelaw was not expected home till tea-time, and the meal was to be eaten at a later hour than usual.

The rain increased as the time for the farmer’s return drew nearer.  He had gone out in the morning without his overcoat, Mrs. Tadman remembered, and was likely to get wet through on his way home, unless he should have borrowed some extra covering at Malsham.  His temper, which of late had been generally at its worst, would hardly be improved by this annoyance.

There was a very substantial meal waiting for him:  a ponderous joint of cold roast beef, a dish of ham and eggs preparing in the kitchen, with an agreeable frizzling sound, a pile of hot buttered cakes kept hot upon the oven top; but there was no fire in the parlour, and the room looked a little cheerless in spite of the well-spread table.  They had discontinued fires for about a fortnight, at Mr. Whitelaw’s command.  He didn’t want to be ruined by his coal-merchant’s bill if it was a chilly spring, he told his household; and at his own bidding the fire-place had been polished and garnished for the summer.  But this evening was colder than any evening lately, by reason of that blusterous rising wind, which blew the rain-drops against the window-panes with as sharp a rattle as if they had been hailstones; and Mr. Whitelaw coming in presently, disconsolate and dripping, was by no means inclined to abide by his own decision about the fires.

“Why the ——­ haven’t you got a fire here?” he demanded savagely.

“It was your own wish, Stephen,” answered Mrs. Tadman.

“My own fiddlesticks!  Of course I didn’t care to see my wood and coals burning to waste when the sun was shining enough to melt any one.  But when a man comes home wet to the skin, he doesn’t want to come into a room like an ice-house.  Call the girl, and tell her to light a blazing fire while I go and change my clothes.  Let her bring plenty of wood, and put a couple of logs on top of the coals.  I’m frozen to the very bones driving home in the rain.”

Mrs. Tadman gave a plaintive sigh as she departed to obey her kinsman.

“That’s just like Stephen,” she said; “if it was you or me that wanted a fire, we might die of cold before we got leave to light one; but he never grudges anything for his own comfort!”