By Jove, I am sorry it was a Revercomb," he added under his breath.
A frown had settled on the face of the old gentleman, and he poured the syrup over his buckwheat cakes with the manner of a man who is about to argue a case for the defence when his natural sympathies are with the prosecution.
"They are an irascible family from the mother down," he observed, "and I'm sorry you've got into trouble with them so soon for the miller is probably the most popular man in the county." He paused, cleared his throat, and after a tentative glance at Kesiah, which fell short of her bosom, decided to leave the sentence in his mind unspoken while they remained in her presence.
A little later, when the two men were smoking in the library, Gay brought the conversation back again to the point at which the lawyer had so hastily dropped it.
"Am I likely, then, to have trouble with the Revercombs ?" he asked, with a disturbing memory of Blossom's flaxen head under the hooded shawl.
"It's not improbable that the family will take up the matter.

These country folk are fearful partisans, you see.

However, it may lead to nothing worse than the miller's refusing to grind your corn or forbidding you to use the bridle path over his pasture." "Had my uncle any friction in that quarter when he lived here ?" Mr.Chamberlayne's cigar had gone out while he talked, and striking a match on a silver box, he watched the thin blue flame abstractedly an instant before he answered.
"Were you ever told," he inquired, "that there was some talk of arresting Abner Revercomb before the coroner's jury agreed on a verdict ?" "Abner?
He's the eldest of the brothers, isn't he?
No, I hadn't heard of it." "It was only the man's reputation for uprightness, I believe, that prevented the arrest.

The Revercombs are a remarkable family for their station in life, and they derive their ability entirely from their mother, who was one of the Hawtreys.

They belong to the new order--to the order that is rapidly forging to the surface and pushing us dilapidated aristocrats out of the way.