Often, in the darkness of the night after she had gone to bed, she could feel her cheek burn at the recollection that this ‘ignorant clod,’ as she contemptuously called him to herself, had the power to make her feel a weak, undisciplined child by merely never losing his self-control.

There would have been consolation in the thought that in his stupidity he did not understand how she despised him, how infinitely beneath her she considered him, had it not been darkened by the suspicion that he understood perfectly well and didn’t care.

How dared he, how dared he!

She had complained of his familiar manner to her brother a day or two after her arrival.  But he had given her neither support nor consolation.

“My dear Nora,” he said, “we are not back in England.  The sooner you forget all the old notions of class and class distinctions, the happier you’ll be.  They won’t go here.  As long as a man’s straight, honest and a worker—­and Frank’s all three—­it doesn’t make any odds whether he’s working for himself or for someone else.  We’re all on the same footing.  It is only due to the fact that I’ve had two good years in succession that I’m not somebody’s ‘hired man’ myself.”

“Don’t, Eddie, don’t; you don’t realize how you hurt me.”

“My dear girl, I’m sorry; but I’m in dead earnest.”

“You, a hired man?  Oh, I can’t believe it.”

“It’s true, nevertheless.  Plenty of better fellows than I have had to do it.  When you’re starting in, unless you have a good deal bigger capital than I had, you only need to be hailed out, frosted out, or weeded out a couple of years in succession to use up your little stake, and then where are you?”

“What do you mean by ’weeded out’?”

He was just about to explain when a halloo from the stables cut him short.  “There’s Frank now.  I ought to be out helping him this minute; we’ve got a good stiff drive ahead of us.  You ask Gertie about it, she’ll explain it to you.”

But Gertie had been deeply preoccupied with some domestic problem and Nora had forborne to question her.  She had intended returning to the subject that evening, but Eddie and Gertie were deep in one of their conferences until nearly bedtime.  It would never have suggested itself to her to seek any information from the objectionable Frank, so under cover of a heated discussion between him and Trotter, she appealed to Reggie.

“What does it mean to be weeded out?”

“Oh, Lord, I don’t know!  Kicked out, I suppose.  Isn’t there something in the Bible about tares and wheat?”

“Nonsense; it doesn’t mean that.  I’d forgotten, by the way, how strong you were on Biblical references.  Do you remember your discussion about Sarah and Benjamin with Agnes Pringle?”

“Of course I do.  And I completely stumped her; don’t you recollect?”

“Goose!  She only wanted to make you look it up for yourself.  But being ‘weeded out’ is something disastrous that happens to the farmers here, like having the crops frozen.”