Just then Mr. Granger came back from his visit to the farm.  He was in high good humour.  The pig had even surpassed her former efforts, and increased in a surprising manner, to the number of fifteen indeed.  Elizabeth thereon produced the two pounds odd shillings which she had “corkscrewed” out of the recalcitrant dissenting farmer, and the sight added to Mr. Granger’s satisfaction.

“Would you believe it, Mr. Bingham,” he said, “in this miserably paid parish I have nearly a hundred pounds owing to me, a hundred pounds in tithe.  There is old Jones who lives out towards the Bell Rock, he owes three years’ tithe—­thirty-four pounds eleven and fourpence.  He can pay and he won’t pay—­says he’s a Baptist and is not going to pay parson’s dues—­though for the matter of that he is nothing but an old beer tub of a heathen.”

“Why don’t you proceed against him, then, Mr. Granger?”

“Proceed, I have proceeded.  I’ve got judgment, and I mean to issue execution in a few days.  I won’t stand it any longer,” he went on, working himself up and shaking his head as he spoke till his thin white hair fell about his eyes.  “I will have the law of him and the others too.  You are a lawyer and you can help me.  I tell you there’s a spirit abroad which just comes to just—­no man isn’t to pay his lawful debts, except of course the parson and the squire.  They must pay or go to the court.  But there is law left, and I’ll have it, before they play the Irish game on us here.”  And he brought down his fist with a bang upon the table.

Geoffrey listened with some amusement.  So this was the weak old man’s sore point—­money.  He was clearly very strong about that—­as strong as Lady Honoria indeed, but with more excuse.  Elizabeth also listened with evident approval, but Beatrice looked pained.

“Don’t get angry, father,” she said; “perhaps he will pay after all.  It is bad to take the law if you can manage any other way—­it breeds so much ill blood.”

“Nonsense, Beatrice,” said her sister sharply.  “Father is quite right.  There’s only one way to deal with them, and that is to seize their goods.  I believe you are socialist about property, as you are about everything else.  You want to pull everything down, from the Queen to the laws of marriage, all for the good of humanity, and I tell you that your ideas will be your ruin.  Defy custom and it will crush you.  You are running your head against a brick wall, and one day you will find which is the harder.”

Beatrice flushed, but answered her sister’s attack, which was all the sharper because it had a certain spice of truth in it.

“I never expressed any such views, Elizabeth, so I do not see why you should attribute them to me.  I only said that legal proceedings breed bad blood in a parish, and that is true.”