“Sit down, I tell you,” said old Featherstone, snappishly. “Stop where you are. Goodbye, Solomon,” he added, trying to wield his stick again, but failing now that he had reversed the handle. “Goodbye, Mrs. Waule. Don’t you come again.”

“I shall be downstairs, Brother, whether or no,” said Solomon. “I shall do my duty, and it remains to be seen what the Almighty will allow.”

“Yes, in property going out of families,” said Mrs. Waule, in continuation⁠—“and where there’s steady young men to carry on. But I pity them who are not such, and I pity their mothers. Goodbye, Brother Peter.”

“Remember, I’m the eldest after you, Brother, and prospered from the first, just as you did, and have got land already by the name of Featherstone,” said Solomon, relying much on that reflection, as one which might be suggested in the watches of the night. “But I bid you goodbye for the present.”