Even when he spoke to Mr.Meadowcroft, he was still on his guard--on his guard against the two young men, as I fancied by the direction which his eyes took on these occasions.

When we began our meal, I had noticed for the first time that Silas Meadowcroft's left hand was strapped up with surgical plaster; and I now further observed that John Jago's wandering brown eyes, furtively looking at everybody round the table in turn, looked with a curious, cynical scrutiny at the young man's injured hand.
By way of making my first evening at the farm all the more embarrassing to me as a stranger, I discovered before long that the father and sons were talking indirectly _at_ each other, through Mr.Jago and through me.

When old Mr.Meadowcroft spoke disparagingly to his overlooker of some past mistake made in the cultivation of the arable land of the farm, old Mr.Meadowcroft's eyes pointed the application of his hostile criticism straight in the direction of his two sons.

When the two sons seized a stray remark of mine about animals in general, and applied it satirically to the mismanagement of sheep and oxen in particular, they looked at John Jago, while they talked to me.

On occasions of this sort--and they happened frequently--Naomi struck in resolutely at the right moment, and turned the talk to some harmless topic.