‘I thought we were to have dined at five,’
he replied, in a low wailing voice.
‘No, papa, indeed indeed you said six.’
‘That was for yesterday.’
‘You said we were to make it six while Mr Belton
was here.’
‘Very well if it must be, I suppose it must
be.’
‘You don’t mean on my account,’
said Will. ’I’ll undertake to eat
my dinner, sir, at any hour that you’ll undertake
to give it me. If there’s a strong point
about me at all, it is my appetite.’
Clara, when she went to her father’s room that
evening, told him what Mr Belton had said about the
shooting, knowing that her father’s feelings
would agree with those which had been expressed by
her cousin. Mr Amedroz of course made this an
occasion for further grumbling, suggesting that Belton
wanted to get the shooting for himself as he had got
the farm. But, nevertheless, the effect which
Clara had intended was produced, and before she left
him he had absolutely proposed that the shooting and
the land should go together.
‘I’m sure that Mr Belton doesn’t
mean that at all,’ said Clara.
‘I don’t care what he means,’ said
the squire.
‘And it wouldn’t do to treat Colonel Askerton
in that way,’ said Clara.
‘I shall treat him just as I like,’ said
the squire.
SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING
A dear cousin, and safe against love-making!
This was Clara’s verdict respecting Will Belton,
as she lay thinking of him in bed that night.
Why that warranty against love-making should be a virtue
in her eyes I cannot, perhaps, explain. But all
young ladies are apt to talk to themselves in such
phrases about gentlemen with whom they are thrown
into chance intimacy as though love-making were in
itself a thing injurious and antagonistic to happiness,
instead of being, as it is, the very salt of life.
Safe against love-making! And yet Mrs Askerton,
her friend, had spoken of the probability of such love-making
as being the great advantage of his coming. And
there could not be a second opinion as to the expediency
of a match between her and her cousin in a worldly
point of view. Clara, moreover, had already perceived
that he was a man fit to guide a wife, very good-
humoured and good-tempered also, anxious to give pleasure
to others, a man of energy and forethought, who would
be sure to do well in the world and hold his head
always high among his fellows as good a husband as
a girl could have. Nevertheless, she congratulated
herself in that she felt satisfied that he was safe
against love-making! Might it be possible that
the pressing of hands at Taunton had been so tender,
and those last words spoken with Captain Aylmer so
soft, that on his account she felt delighted to think
that her cousin was warranted not to make love?
