She was very happy that morning; Amelia had not made game of her, and there had been such a scene.  Laura enjoyed a scene; and Amelia had pleaded so hard and so long with her for that promise.  At last she had given it.  If she had not been such a remarkably foolish woman, she would have known she was glad on the whole that the promise had been extorted from her.  As it was she thought she was sorry, but after a little more urging and pleading she gave up the precious valentine, and saw it devoured by the flames.  It had a Birmingham postmark, and Mrs. Melcombe heard with pleasure that Joseph would be away at least a fortnight.

Laura had wanted a little excitement, just the least amusement; and if not that, just the least recognition of her place in nature as a woman, and a young one.  At present, her imagination had not been long at work on this unpromising payer of the tribute.  If some one, whose household ways and daily English were like her own, had come forward she would soon have forgotten Joseph; for he himself, as an individual, was almost nothing to her, it was only in his having paid the tribute that his power lay.

Late in the afternoon Mr. Augustus Mortimer arrived.  He was received by Mrs. Melcombe almost, as it seemed, with the devotion of a daughter.

The room was strewed with account-books and cards.  It had been intended that he should make some remark about them, and then she was to say, with careless ease, “Only the accounts of the parish charities.”  But he courteously feigning to see none of the litter, she was put out.

He presently went to inspect the repairs and restorations, to look over the garden and the stables; and it was not till the next morning that she found occasion to ask some advice of him.

The cottages on the land were let with the farms, so that the farmers put their labourers into them, charged, it is true, very little rent, but allowed them to get very much out of repair.  It was the farmers’ duty to keep them in repair; but there was no agent, no one to make them do it.  Moreover, they would have it that no repairs worth mentioning were wanted.  Did Mr. Mortimer think if she spent the money she had devoted to charity in repairing these cottages, she could fairly consider that she had spent it in charity?

It was a nice point, certainly, for it would be improving her son’s property, and avoiding disputes with valuable and somewhat unmanageable tenants; and, on the other hand, it would be escaping the bad precedent of paying for repairs out of the estate; so she went on laying this casuistry before the old man while he pulled down his shaggy white brows, and looked very stern over the whole affair.  “Some of the poor old women do suffer so sadly from rheumatism,” she continued, “and our parish doctor says it comes from the damp places they live in, and then there is so much fever in the lower part of the hamlet.”

“You had better let me see the farmers and the cottagers,” said old Augustus.  “I will go into the whole affair, and tell you what I think of it.”