But we have kept the Greshamsbury tenancy waiting under the oak-trees by far too long.  Yes; when young Frank came of age there was still enough left at Greshamsbury, still means enough at the squire’s disposal, to light one bonfire, to roast, whole in its skin, one bullock.  Frank’s virility came on him not quite unmarked, as that of the parson’s sons might do, or the son of a neighbouring attorney.  It could still be reported in the Barsetshire Conservative “Standard” that ‘The beards waggled all,’ at Greshamsbury, now as they had done for many centuries on similar festivals.  Yes; it was so reported.  But this, like so many other such reports, had but a shadow of truth in it.  ‘They poured the liquor in,’ certainly, those who were there; but the beards did not wag as they had been wont to wag in former years.  Beards won’t wag for the telling.  The squire was at his wits’ end for money, and the tenants one and all had so heard.  Rents had been raised on them; timber had fallen fast; the lawyer on the estate was growing rich; tradesmen in Barchester, nay, in Greshamsbury itself, were beginning to mutter; and the squire himself would not be merry.  Under such circumstances the throats of the tenantry will still swallow, but their beards will not wag.

‘I minds well,’ said Farmer Oaklerath to his neighbour, ’when the squire hisself comed of age.  Lord love ’ee!  There was fun going that day.  There was more yale drank then than’s been brewed at the big house these two years.  T’old squoire was a one’er.’

‘And I minds when the squoire was borned; minds it well,’ said an old farmer sitting opposite.  ’Them was the days!  It an’t that long age neither.  Squoire a’nt come o’ fifty yet; no, nor an’t nigh it, though he looks it.  Things be altered at Greemsbury’—­such was the rural pronunciation—­’altered sadly, neebor Oaklerath.  Well, well; I’ll soon be gone, I will, and so it an’t no use talking; but arter paying one pound fifteen for them acres for more nor fifty year, I didn’t think I’d ever be axed for forty shilling.’

Such was the style of conversation which went on at the various tables.  It had certainly been of a very different tone when the squire was born, when he came of age, and when, just two years subsequently, his son had been born.  On each of these events similar rural fetes had been given, and the squire himself had on these occasions been frequent among his guests.  On the first, he had been carried round by his father, a whole train of ladies and nurses following.  On the second, he had himself mixed in all the sports, the gayest of the gay, and each tenant had squeezed his way up to the lawn to get a sight of the Lady Arabella, who, as was already known, was to come from Courcy Castle to Greshamsbury to be their mistress.  It was little they any of them cared now for the Lady Arabella.  On the third, he himself had borne him; his child in his arms as his father had before borne him; he was in