“I don’t know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for me to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be patronized by an idle shepherd, as Will Maskery calls me.  You should have come in a little sooner, Arthur, to hear Joshua’s denunciation of his neighbour Will Maskery.  The old fellow wants me to excommunicate the wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm—­that is to say, to your grandfather—­to be turned out of house and yard.  If I chose to interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in the next number of their magazine.  It wouldn’t take me much trouble to persuade Chad Cranage and half a dozen other bull-headed fellows that they would be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Will Maskery out of the village with rope-ends and pitchforks; and then, when I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get gloriously drunk after their exertions, I should have put the climax to as pretty a farce as any of my brother clergy have set going in their parishes for the last thirty years.”

“It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an ’idle shepherd’ and a ‘dumb dog,’” said Mrs. Irwine.  “I should be inclined to check him a little there.  You are too easy-tempered, Dauphin.”

“Why, Mother, you don’t think it would be a good way of sustaining my dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of Will Maskery?  Besides, I’m not so sure that they are aspersions.  I am a lazy fellow, and get terribly heavy in my saddle; not to mention that I’m always spending more than I can afford in bricks and mortar, so that I get savage at a lame beggar when he asks me for sixpence.  Those poor lean cobblers, who think they can help to regenerate mankind by setting out to preach in the morning twilight before they begin their day’s work, may well have a poor opinion of me.  But come, let us have our luncheon.  Isn’t Kate coming to lunch?”

“Miss Irwine told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs,” said Carroll; “she can’t leave Miss Anne.”

“Oh, very well.  Tell Bridget to say I’ll go up and see Miss Anne presently.  You can use your right arm quite well now, Arthur,” Mr. Irwine continued, observing that Captain Donnithorne had taken his arm out of the sling.

“Yes, pretty well; but Godwin insists on my keeping it up constantly for some time to come.  I hope I shall be able to get away to the regiment, though, in the beginning of August.  It’s a desperately dull business being shut up at the Chase in the summer months, when one can neither hunt nor shoot, so as to make one’s self pleasantly sleepy in the evening.  However, we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July.  My grandfather has given me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion.  The world will not see the grand epoch of my majority twice.  I think I shall have a lofty throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an Olympian goddess.”