could not continue to live in his father's house with any great pleasure. For six brief months, after his marriage, he had known the pride of possession, but with the arrival of the family Clonmere had ceased to belong to him. One day, years hence perhaps, he would possess it again, but until that day it was better to visit it at intervals, as a guest, and in the meantime find somewhere for himself and Fanny-Rosa and young Johnnie.
'The trouble is,' Fanny-Rosa said, 'that you make no attempt to stand up to your father. You and the girls are all frightened of him. A good quarrel and a lot of shouting would clear the air.'
'I detest quarrelling, and shouting even more,' said John. 'Clonmere belongs to my father, and until he dies it is better that we do not try to divide it. Therefore, dearest, we have our own house this side of the water, where no one can interfere with us, I can race my greyhounds, and you can have your babies.'
'I think maybe you have the devil's pride in you, John. You want Clonmere so much that you do not wish to share it with anyone else.'
'Maybe I have the devil's pride, and maybe you are right, and maybe too I do not wish to share my Fanny- Rosa with my own black-headed, screaming devil of a son, who has got all the faults of his father, and the wickedness of his mother, and no good in him at all. So the sooner you have another baby the better, to put young Johnnie's nose a little out of joint.'
Fanny-Rosa put her arms about her husband, and smiled the way she did, telling him he was jealous, and a bear, and she did not love him at all, and then she was gone in a flash, laughing over her shoulder, the old elusive Fanny-Rosa that had won him first on Hungry Hill.
The problem was made easier for them during the winter by his father suddenly buying a house some thirty miles from Lletharrog at the new fashionable watering-place of Saunby, which was within an hour or so's steaming distance from Bronsea, and more accessible in winter than the long drive backwards and forwards made Lletharrog.
It was therefore suggested that John and Fanny-Rosa should remain on at the farm-house and make it their headquarters for the future, while Copper John and his daughters passed the winter at the new house in Saunby, which was promptly named Brodrick House and became their permanent address while living that side of the water. The arrangement suited everyone, and John did not have the bother of finding a house for himself. He was content with Lletharrog, and so was Fanny-Rosa, and so apparently was Johnnie, whose nose remained entirely in place when his sister Fanny was born the following April, and did not shift in the slightest at the appearance of small Henry a year or so later. Johnnie was in fact the tyrant of the household, and no one, except his mother, was allowed to gainsay him in any way whatever.
He was a handsome child, with his father's dark hair and eyes, but, as old Martha said, with his mother's ways and his mother's quick temper into the bargain. If he wanted a thing he shouted for it, and when he had it soon tired of it, and shouted for something else.
'The boy never seems content,' John would say, staring in perplexity at his small son, who had thrown a fine toy into the fire because he had not liked the colour. 'Why does he not sit quietly, like Fanny?'
'He has so much spirit,' said Fanny-Rosa, 'haven't you, my darling?'
Her darling scowled, and began drumming with his heels on the floor.
'I have never beaten a puppy I reared, and I don't propose to beat my own son,' said John, 'but I wish to heaven I knew the right way to handle the little fellow, so that he would keep quiet at least.
Look at him, now, pulling at Fanny's hair.
I don't remember that I ever pulled Barbara's.'
'No doubt you did, and you have forgotten,' said Fanny-Rosa, lifting her boy and giving him a lolly-pop. 'Call Martha, and tell her to take Fanny upstairs; she is being silly, and upsetting Johnnie'.
'I should have said it was the other way round,' said John.
'Nonsense! Fanny always whines when her hail is pulled, and the whining excites Johnnie. It is most irritating for him. You shall walk with me to the village, my darling, and we will see what old Mrs. Evans has in her shop for you. And if you are a very good boy you shall have dinner with father and mother, and drink ale out of your New Year mug as a special treat.'
Why Johnnie should suddenly deserve a special treat, after throwing his toy in the fire and pulling his sister's hair, his father was at a loss to understand, but at least the promise had the desired effect, the scowl vanished, a radiant smile came over the boy's face, transforming him immediately from an ugly imp into a small object of great charm and attraction, and he trotted off hand in hand with his mother, a model of good behaviour.
John shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, and went off whistling to visit the greyhounds in their kennels. The upbringing of children was beyond him. No doubt women knew what they were about, although he had an uneasy feeling that Copper John would have leathered him as a youngster had he behaved to his sisters as young Johnnie behaved to poor Fanny, but to take down the little chap's breeches and lay hands on him was something he could not bring himself to do. When there was noise and confusion in the house because of Johnnie, his father would go into the garden, or down to the river, and come back again when it was all over. Somehow, it seemed to him the easiest thing to do. And little by little this policy of avoiding trouble would creep into everything.
Fanny-Rosa ran Lletharrog, and Fanny-Rosa could deal with the servants. If one of them was idle or rude, well, Fanny-Rosa must dismiss him. If old Martha did not understand Johnnie and had words with Fanny-Rosa, well, let old Martha be pensioned off, but for heaven's sake let there be no scene about it which he would have to face.
'You are as bad as my father,' said Fanny-Rosa, 'escaping from your responsibilities. What a good thing for you that I am not a timid, frightened little woman, dependent upon you for everything.'
'You are dependent upon me for the only things that matter,' said John, putting his arm round her waist.
'Ah, you great useless one,' laughed his wife, 'would you forget I am the mother of three children, and maybe a fourth before we know where we are? And all you do is to sit about all day and look at me, and yawn, and smile, and wander down to the kennels to pat your greyhounds, and even they are becoming as lazy and contented as yourself.'
It was true that John had no longer the same interest in coursing. The season would come along before he realised how the months had slipped by, and his dogs, having become slack and spoilt during the summer months, with too rich a diet and too little exercise, would need several weeks' hard training before entering into competition. This required considerable energy and concentration from their master, which he found himself unable to give.
'It's no use, Fanny-Rosa,' he said one day, after returning from a meeting where his dogs had failed to win more than a few points from the critical judges, 'my coursing days are over. The excitement I had from it once has gone, I don't know why. It seemed to me, watching this day, that the dogs were running loose, here and there over the course, for no very great purpose, and all to destroy a hare, which maybe had a family somewhere. No, I think in future I'll take my rod and go down to the river, and even if I should catch a very small fish, why, I could put him back again, and he'd be none the wiser.'
And John would throw himself into his chair, in an untidy living-room of Lletharrog, no longer recognisable as the neat, trim parlour of Barbara's days, and pulling tiny Henry on his knee, and with Fanny looking over one shoulder, and Johnnie over the other, ha would proceed to show them the precious case of flies, the gaudy feathers proving an irresistible attraction to the children. There would be a dog on the opposite chair, and a cat on the hearth-rug, nuzzling a brood of young kittens, while toys, needlework, and books lay strewn about the floor, and Fanny-Rosa, seized with a sudden passion for dressmaking, leant over the table with a large pair of scissors, preparing to cut wastefully into the folds of an evening gown to make herself a jacket which might hide something of her once more widening figure.
The coming of the babies made little difference to Fanny-Rosa's looks. She was, so her husband thought, as lovely as the day he married her; she was still wayward, careless and capricious, the true daughter of Simon Flower. Her servants never knew where they were with her. One day she would be generous, indulgent, giving them roast for dinner and suggesting a holiday for the lot of them, and the day after a scolding whirlwind would burst into the kitchen, with a packet of sugar in her hand which she swore had been stolen from her untidy store-cupboard, and a flow of language would escape from their flaming mistress that the servants would declare afterwards could only have been learnt from the lads in her father's stables. John, hearing the tirade of wrath from the living-room, would laugh quietly to himself and go out into the garden. Fanny-Rosa would have her scene, and enjoy herself hugely, storm upstairs to the children's bedroom afterwards and probably beat the frightened girl from the village
