“What is the matter, father?” said Rhoda.

“I’ll tell you, my dear,” Anthony replied for him.  “He’s envying me some one I want to ask me that question when I’m at my tea in London.”

CHAPTER IV

Mr. Fleming kept his forehead from his daughter’s good-night kiss until the room was cleared, after supper, and then embracing her very heartily, he informed her that her uncle had offered to pay her expenses on a visit to London, by which he contrived to hint that a golden path had opened to his girl, and at the same time entreated her to think nothing of it; to dismiss all expectations and dreams of impossible sums from her mind, and simply to endeavour to please her uncle, who had a right to his own, and a right to do what he liked with his own, though it were forty, fifty times as much as he possessed—­and what that might amount to no one knew.  In fact, as is the way with many experienced persons, in his attempt to give advice to another, he was very impressive in lecturing himself, and warned that other not to succumb to a temptation principally by indicating the natural basis of the allurement.  Happily for young and for old, the intense insight of the young has much to distract or soften it.  Rhoda thanked her father, and chose to think that she had listened to good and wise things.

“Your sister,” he said—­“but we won’t speak of her.  If I could part with you, my lass, I’d rather she was the one to come back.”

“Dahlia would be killed by our quiet life now,” said Rhoda.

“Ay,” the farmer mused.  “If she’d got to pay six men every Saturday night, she wouldn’t complain o’ the quiet.  But, there—­you neither of you ever took to farming or to housekeeping; but any gentleman might be proud to have one of you for a wife.  I said so when you was girls.  And if, you’ve been dull, my dear, what’s the good o’ society?  Tea-cakes mayn’t seem to cost money, nor a glass o’ grog to neighbours; but once open the door to that sort o’ thing and your reckoning goes.  And what I said to your poor mother’s true.  I said:  Our girls, they’re mayhap not equals of the Hollands, the Nashaws, the Perrets, and the others about here—­no; they’re not equals, because the others are not equals o’ them, maybe.”

The yeoman’s pride struggled out in this obscure way to vindicate his unneighbourliness and the seclusion of his daughters from the society of girls of their age and condition; nor was it hard for Rhoda to assure him, as she earnestly did, that he had acted rightly.

Rhoda, assisted by Mrs. Sumfit, was late in the night looking up what poor decorations she possessed wherewith to enter London, and be worthy of her sister’s embrace, so that she might not shock the lady Dahlia had become.