Sink or Swim? , Volume II

Of all the many changes that had taken place amongst the characters in my story, none was more thorough, even though its features might be less boldly marked, than that which had gradually crept over the household of excellent John Beacham. From the moment when he dealt the blow that levelled his wife's worthless parent to the ground, John had never been exactly the same man. A sense of failure, of a disastrous fall in his own esteem, was in some measure the cause of this woeful alteration: but there was more, and for worse than this, at the bottom of his apparent moroseness, of his often sullen temper, and of what his mother called his "silent ways. " There was far worse indeed than this -- far worse than any morbid impression that he himself had sunk in the opinion of the world at large; for there was the sight of Honor's altered face, and a near prospect, nearer day by day, of some cruel domestic change for this honest, single-hearted man, whose youth and manhood had hitherto passed so uneventfully.

The summer had passed away, the autumn-time had come and gone; from the hedge-rows of the Paddocks the last lingering leaves had fallen, and another new year was about, with the accustomed rejoicings, to be ushered in, but still things had not improved in John's altered home. No sunshine of the heart brightened up the old walls, and yet, for all that inside there was gloom, it was necessary, for old custom's sake, that the show of merriment should be kept up; for Christmas-time was nigh at hand, and hospitality, as well as jollity, had, time out of mind, been, at that festive season, the order of the day at Peartree-house. To give and distribute largely and ungrudgingly at the dying-out of the old year had ever been an institution in Mrs. Beacham's family. "The Turtons," she was wont to say (John's mother was -- as of course all the world knew -- a Turton of Cradock, in the West Riding of York) "The Turtons always kep a good table at Christmas-time both for rich and poor, in their own county; and I'm not going to do different, though this _is_ Sandyshire. Christmas comes but once a year, and it's only right that when it does come, them as _can_ afford it should give them as can't their bellies full."