“My dear miss Thoroughbung,—­In the views which we both promulgated this morning I fear that there was some essential misunderstanding as to the mode of life which had occurred to both of us.  You, as was so natural at your age, and with your charms, have not been slow to anticipate a coming period of uncheckered delights.  Your allusion to a pony-carriage, and other incidental allusions,”—­he did not think it well to mention more particularly the fish and the champagne,—­“have made clear the sort of future life which you have pictured to yourself.  Heaven forbid that I should take upon myself to find fault with anything so pleasant and so innocent!  But my prospects of life are different, and in seeking the honor of an alliance with you I was looking for a quiet companion in my declining years, and it might be also to a mother to a possible future son.  When you honored me with an unmistakable sign of your affection, on my going, I was just about to explain all this.  You must excuse me if my mouth was then stopped by the mutual ardor of our feeling.  I was about to say—­” But he had found it difficult to explain what he had been about to say, and on the next morning, when the time for writing had come, he heard news which detained him for the day, and then the opportunity was gone.

On the following morning, when Matthew appeared at his bedside with his cup of tea at nine o’clock, tidings were brought him.  He took in the Buntingford Gazette, which came twice a week, and as Matthew laid it, opened and unread, in its accustomed place, he gave the information, which he had no doubt gotten from the paper.  “You haven’t heard it, sir, I suppose, as yet?”

“Heard what?”

“About Miss Puffle.”

“What about Miss Puffle?  I haven’t heard a word.  What about Miss Puffle?” He had been thinking that moment of Miss Puffle,—­of how she would be superior to Miss Thoroughbung in many ways,—­so that he sat up in his bed, holding the untasted tea in his hand.

“She’s gone off with young Farmer Tazlehurst.”

“Miss Puffle gone off, and with her father’s tenant’s son!”

“Yes indeed, sir.  She and her father have been quarrelling for the last ten years, and now she’s off.  She was always riding and roistering about the country with them dogs and them men; and now she’s gone.”

“Oh heavens!” exclaimed the squire, thinking of his own escape.

“Yes, indeed, sir.  There’s no knowing what any one of them is up to.  Unless they gets married afore they’re thirty, or thirty-five at most, they’re most sure to get such ideas into their head as no one can mostly approve.”  This had been intended by Matthew as a word of caution to his master, but had really the opposite effect.  He resolved at the moment that the latter should not be said of Miss Thoroughbung.

And he turned Matthew out of the room with a flea in his ear.  “How dare you speak in that way of your betters?  Mr. Puffle, the lady’s father, has for many years been my friend.  I am not saying anything of the lady, nor saying that she has done right.  Of course, down-stairs, in the servants’ hall, you can say what you please; but up here, in my presence, you should not speak in such language of a lady behind whose chair you may be called upon to wait.”