He gave Mrs Eugene Penhallow’s brogues a final rub, and set them down. He didn’t reckon much to Mrs Eugene; she was a foreigner; she didn’t understand Cornish ways, nor, seemingly, want to. She didn’t like living at Trevellin, either, and made no secret of it.

Picking up one of Eugene’s shoes, and spitting on its glossy surface, Jimmy grinned, and reflected that Mrs Eugene wouldn’t succeed in moving Eugene from quarters which he found comfortable, not if she tried till Doomsday. Jimmy was contemptuous of Eugene, a hypochondriac at thirty-five, always feeling the draughts, and talking about his weak chest. He was contemptuous of Mrs Eugene too, but more tolerantly. He couldn’t see what there was in Eugene to absorb her whole attention, or to make her so passionately devoted to him. She’d got spirit, too: she wasn’t a poor downtrodden thing, like Penhallow’s wife, who allowed herself to be bullied by the Penhallows as though she was nobody. She’d stand up to Penhallow, telling him off like a regular vixen, while he lay in his great bed, roaring with laughter at her, egging her on, saying things to make her lose her temper worse than ever, and telling her she was a grand little cat, even if she didn’t know a blood-mare from a stallion, and hadn’t had more sense than to marry a nincompoop like Eugene.

Jimmy turned his attention to Bart’s riding-boots, which bore every evidence of Bart’s having walked all about the farm in them, which he probably had. Bart, to whom the reading of a book was a penance, and the writing of a letter a Herculean labour, was going to be a farmer. No doubt, thought Jimmy, he planned to settle down at Trellick Farm with Loveday one of these fine days. Trellick was earmarked for Bart, but catch Penhallow handing it over to him if he married Loveday! He might whistle for it then: in Jimmy’s opinion he wouldn’t in any event make a go of it. He’d no head, not as much sense as Conrad, his twin, though from being the hardier and the more rollicking of the two it was he who always took the lead, and set an example for the other to follow.