Orange and Green | Page 3

as I used to hear when I was a girl!"
Jabez Whitefoot inherited his mother's docility of disposition, and, even
when he grew to middle age, never dreamt of disputing his father's
absolute rule, and remained strictly neutral when his wife, the daughter
of an old comrade of his father, settled a few miles away, fought stoutly
at times against his tyranny.
"You are less than a man, Jabez," she would say to him, indignantly,
"to put up, at your age, with being lectured as if you were a child.
Parental obedience is all very well, and I hope I was always obedient to
my father; but when it comes to a body not being permitted to have a

soul of his own, it is going too far. If you had told me that, when I
became your wife, I was to become the inmate of a dungeon for the rest
of my existence, I wouldn't have had you, not if you had been master of
all the broad lands of Leinster."
But, though unable to rouse her husband into making an effort for some
sort of freedom, Hannah Whitefoot had battled more successfully in
behalf of her son, John.
"You have had the management of your son, sir, and I will manage
mine," she said. "I will see that he does not grow up a reprobate or a
Papist, but at least he shall grow up a man, and his life shall not be as
hateful as mine is, if I can help it."
Many battles had already been fought on this point, but in the end
Hannah Whitefoot triumphed. Although her husband never, himself,
opposed his father's authority, he refused absolutely to use his own to
compel his wife to submission.
"You know, sir," he said, "you had your own way with my mother and
me, and I say nothing for or against it. Hannah has other ideas. No one
can say that she is not a good woman, or that she fails in her duty to me.
All people do not see life from the same point of view. She is just as
conscientious, in her way, as you are in yours. She reads her Bible and
draws her own conclusions from it, just as you do; and as she is the
mother of the child, and as I know she will do her best for it, I shall not
interfere with her way of doing it."
And so Hannah won at last, and although, according to modern ideas,
the boy's training would have been considered strict in the extreme, it
differed very widely from that which his father had had before him.
Sounds of laughter, such as never had been heard within the walls of
the house, since Zephaniah laid stone upon stone, sometimes issued
from the room where Hannah and the child were together alone, and
Zephaniah was out with Jabez about the farm; and Hannah herself
benefited, as much as did the child, by her rebellion against the
authorities. Jabez, too, was conscious that home was brighter and
pleasanter than it had been, and when Zephaniah burst into a torrent of

indignation, when he discovered that the child had absolutely heard
some fairy stories from its mother, Jabez said quietly:
"Father, I wish no dispute. I have been an obedient son to you, and will
continue so to my life's end; but if you are not satisfied with the doings
of my wife, I will depart with her. There are plenty who will be glad to
let me a piece of land; and if I only work there as hard as I work here, I
shall assuredly be able to support her and my boy. So let this be the last
word between us."
This threat put an end to the struggle. Zephaniah had, like most of his
class, a keen eye to the main chance, and could ill spare the services of
Jabez and his thrifty and hard-working wife; and henceforth, except by
pointed references, in the lengthy morning and evening prayers, to the
backsliding in his household, he held his peace.
Between the Castle and Zephaniah Whitefoot there had never been any
intercourse. The dowager Mrs. Davenant hated the Cromwellite
occupier of her estate, not only as a usurper, but as the representative of
the man who had slain her husband. She never alluded to his existence,
and had always contrived, in her rides and walks, to avoid any point
from which she could obtain so much as a distant view of the square,
ugly house which formed a blot on the fair landscape. She still spoke of
the estate as if it extended to its original boundaries, and ignored
absolutely the very existence of Zephaniah Whitefoot, and all that
belonged to him. But