The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Eldest Son, by Archibald Marshall This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Eldest Son Author: Archibald Marshall Release Date: January 23, 2012 [EBook #38646] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELDEST SON *** Produced by Al Haines THE ELDEST SON BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL Author of "Exton Manor" NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY Published September, 1911 To KATHLEEN CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Squire Is Infernally Worried II A Question of Matrimony III Exit Miss Bird IV The Dower-House V Lady George VI Blaythorn Rectory VII The Squire Puts His Foot Down VIII The Squire Feels Trouble Coming IX Dick Pays a Sunday Visit X The Meet at Apthorpe Common XI Dick Leaves Kencote and Makes a Discovery XII The House Party XIII The Hunt Ball XIV A Shoot XV The Guns and the Ladies XVI The Money Question XVII Sunday and Monday XVIII Mrs. Clinton Chooses a Governess XIX Mrs. Clinton In Jermyn Street XX Aunt Laura Intervenes XXI An Engagement XXII Dick Comes Home XXIII Humphrey Counts His Chickens XXIV Virginia Goes to Kencote XXV A Lawn Meet XXVI What Miss Phipp Saw XXVII The Run of the Season XXVIII Property XXIX Brothers XXX Miss Bird Hears All About It CHAPTER I THE SQUIRE IS INFERNALLY WORRIED "Nina," said the Squire, "I'm most infernally worried." He was sitting in his wife's morning-room, in a low chair by the fire. In front of him was a table set for tea for one—himself. There were buttered toast and dry toast and preserves, a massive silver teapot, milk jug, cream jug, and sugar basin, a breakfast cup of China tea, and two boiled eggs, one of which he was attacking, sitting forward in his chair with his legs bent. He had come in from hunting a few minutes before, at about six o'clock, and it was his habit thus to consume viands which most men of his age and bulk might have been afraid of, as likely to spoil their dinner. But he was an active man, in spite of his fifty-nine years and his tendency to put on flesh, and it would have taken more than a tea that was almost a meal to reduce his appetite for dinner at eight, after a day in the saddle and a lunch off sandwiches and a flask of sherry. When his tea was over he would indulge himself in half an hour's nap, with the Times open at the leader page on his knee, and go up to dress, feeling every inch of him a sportsman and an English country gentleman. His tea was generally brought to him in his library. This evening a footman had followed him into that room immediately upon his entering the house, as usual, had unbuckled his spurs, pulled off his boots for him, and put on in their place a pair of velvet slippers worked in silk, which had been warming in front of the fire. Only when his coat was wet or much splashed with mud did the Squire change that. He considered smoking-jackets rather effeminate, and slippers, on ordinary occasions, "sloppy." It was only in his dressing-room or on these evenings after hunting that he wore them. Otherwise, if he had to change his boots during the daytime he put on another pair. He was particular on little points like this. All his rules were kept precisely, by himself and those about him. This evening he had told the footman, and the butler who had followed him into the room with the tray, that he would have his tea in Mrs. Clinton's room, and he had marched across the hall with a firm and decisive step, in his red coat and buckskin breeches, between which and his hand-knitted heather-mixture socks showed a white expanse of under-drawers round a muscular calf. Mrs. Clinton sat opposite to him in another low chair, at work on a woollen waistcoat. He always wore waistcoats made by her, thick for the winter, light for the summer, and she knitted his socks for him, of which he required a large number, for he hated them to be darned. He liked to see her working for him like this. He was a rich man, but a woman ought to work with her hands for her husband, whether he was rich or poor. It was her wifely duty, and incidentally it kept her out of mischief. Mrs. Clinton, at the age of fifty-four, with her smooth yellow-grey hair and her quiet and composed face, did not look as if she would be up to serious mischief, even if this and other restrictions were removed from her. She looked up when her husband addressed her, and marked the furrow between his heavy eyebrows. Then she looked down again at her work and waited for him to unbosom himself further. "How old is Dick?" asked the Squire, leaning forward to put a spoonful of yolk of egg into his mouth with one hand, while he shielded his grey beard with the other. She knew then the subject upon which he had expressed himself as infernally worried, for he was not accustomed to keep the first stirrings of discontent to himself. "He was thirty-four last April," she said. "Thirty-four," he repeated. "Yes; and I was twenty-four when I married you. That's early. I shouldn't advise any young man to marry at that age, unless, perhaps, he was the only one to keep a name going—as I was, of course—at least in my immediate family. But thirty-four! It's really time Dick thought about it. He's the eldest son. It's his duty. And as far as I can see he never gives the matter a thought. Eh?" "As far as I can see he is not thinking about it," said Mrs. Clinton. "Well, if I couldn't see you couldn't see. I say it is time that he did begin thinking about it. I'm getting on now— good for another twenty years, I should hope, but I want to see the succession assured. Walter is the only one of the boys that's married, and he's only got two girls. Of course, he may have a son—they're coming pretty quick—but I've never got over that doctoring business. I shouldn't like the heir of Kencote to be brought up in a place like Melbury Park, and I say so freely—to you." This was the echo of an old disturbance. The Squire's third son had refused to take Orders, with a view of occupying the family living, but had studied medicine, and was now practising in a suburb of London, and not one of the most genteel suburbs either. That furrow always appeared faintly in the Squire's brow when he was forced to mention the distasteful words Melbury Park. "I think it would be a good thing if Dick were to marry," said Mrs. Clinton. "Good thing? Of course it would be a good thing. That's just what I'm saying. There's Humphrey; he doesn't look much like marrying, either. In fact, if he doesn't pick up a wife with a pot of money, I'd rather he didn't. He spends quite enough as it is. I've no opinion of that London life, except for a bit when a man's young and before he settles down. Dick has been in the Guards now for—what?—twelve years. I never meant that he should take up soldiering as a profession. Just a few years spent with a good regiment—as I had myself, in the Blues—that's all right for a young fellow who has a good property to succeed to. But an eldest son ought to settle down, on the property, and get married, and have sons to succeed him." "Dick comes here a good deal," said Mrs. Clinton, "and he takes an interest in the property." "Well, I should hope he did," responded the Squire. "The property will belong to him when my time's over. What do you mean?" "I only mean that Dick is not wrapped up in London life and all that goes with it, as Humphrey seems to be." "Oh, Humphrey! I've no patience with Humphrey. If Kencote isn't good enough for him let him stay away. Only I won't pay any more bills for him. He has a good allowance and he must keep within it. I've told him so. Now if I'd put him into the army, instead of the Foreign Office, he might have stuck to it and made a profession of it. I wish I had— into a working regiment. It would have done him all the good in the world. However, I don't want to talk about Humphrey. I don't expect an heir to come from him; and Frank is too young to marry yet. Besides—a sailor! It's better for him to marry later. Dick ought to marry, and there's an end of it. And when he comes down to-morrow I shall tell him so." Mrs. Clinton made no immediate reply, but after a pause, during which the Squire came to the end of his eggs and began to attack the buttered toast, she said, "I have to tell you something, Edward, which I am afraid will disturb you." "Besides," pursued the Squire in his loud, resolute voice, "there's the dower-house standing empty now. If Dick were to get married soon I need not bother about finding a tenant for it. I don't want to let it; it's too near here. If we got people there we didn't like it would be an infernal nuisance. Eh, Nina? What were you saying?" "I am sorry to say," said Mrs. Clinton, "that Miss Bird is going to leave us." The Squire was just about to put a piece of toast into his mouth, which was half open for its reception. It remained half open while he looked at his wife, the toast arrested halfway. "Miss Bird! Leave us!" he exclaimed when he had found his voice. He could hardly have been more astounded if his wife had announced that she was going to leave him, and indeed Miss Bird had lived at Kencote nearly as long as Mrs. Clinton, and had initiated into the mysteries of learning all the young Clintons, from Dick, who was now thirty-four, down to the twins, Joan and Nancy, who were fifteen. "She has talked about it for some time," said Mrs. Clinton. "She has felt that the children were getting beyond her, and ought to have better teaching than she can give them." "Oh, stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed the Squire. "I don't want the children turned into blue-stockings. I'm quite satisfied with what Miss Bird is doing for them, and if she wants telling so, for goodness' sake tell her, and let's have no more of such rubbish. Miss Bird indeed! Who's she to upset the whole house?" "I am afraid she has determined to go, Edward," said Mrs. Clinton in her equable voice. "Her invalid sister, you know, has lost her husband, and there is no one else to look after her." The Squire grunted. "Well, if that's the reason," he said, rather grudgingly, "I suppose we can't complain, although it's a most infernal nuisance. I've got used to Miss Bird. She's a silly old creature in some respects, but she's faithful and honest. Now we shall have to get used to somebody else. Really, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong. Life is hardly worth living with all these worries. One never seems to get a moment's peace. I'm going into my room now, Nina, to read the paper for a bit." "I should like to talk to you for a few minutes longer about the children," said Mrs. Clinton. "As a change has to be made, I want to make a thorough one. It is quite true that they are beyond Miss Bird, even if she could have stayed. I should like to send them to a good school for two or three years, and then to France or Germany for a year." The Squire bent his brows in an amazed frown. "What on earth can you be thinking of, Nina?" he exclaimed. "France or Germany? Nice healthy English girls—teach 'em to eat frogs and horse-sausage—pick up a lot of affected nonsense! You can put that idea out of your head at once." Mrs. Clinton's calm face flushed. "There is no need to talk of that for two or three years," she said. "I should like them now—when Miss Bird leaves us—to go to a really good school in England, where they can learn something." "Learn something? What do you mean—learn something? Haven't they been learning something all their lives—at least since Miss Bird began to teach them? What does a girl want to learn, except how to read and write a good hand and add up accounts? I don't want any spectacled, short-haired, flat-chested females in my house, thank you. The children are very well as they are. They're naughty sometimes, I've no doubt, but they're good girls on the whole. Girls ought to be brought up at home under their mother's eye. I can't think what you want to send them away from you for, Nina. It isn't like you. I should have thought you would have missed them. I know I should, and they're not going to school." "I should miss them very much," said Mrs. Clinton. "Very well, then, let them stop at home. It's quite simple." Mrs. Clinton was silent, bending her head over her work. "You would miss them and I should miss them," pursued the Squire, after a pause. "No, there's no sense in it." There was another pause, and then the Squire asked, "Why do you want to send them to school?" Mrs. Clinton laid down her work and looked at him. "I should be satisfied," she said, "if they could get the teaching they ought to have at home. Perhaps I should prefer it. But it would mean a first-class governess living here, and——" "Well, there's no objection to that," interrupted the Squire. "I dare say old Miss Bird is a little out of date. Get a good governess by all means; only not a blue-stocking, mind you." Mrs. Clinton smiled. "I'm afraid she would have to be what you would call a blue-stocking," she said. "But she needn't show it. Clever girls don't wear spectacles and short hair necessarily nowadays." "Oh, don't they?" said the Squire good-humouredly. He was leaning back in his chair now, looking at the fire. "How are you going to set about getting one?" "I should ask Emmeline to help me." Emmeline was Lady Birkett, the wife of Mrs. Clinton's brother, the judge. "Not a bad idea," said the Squire. "But I won't have any of your suffragettes. Herbert is a very good fellow, but he's a most pestilent Radical." "You would let me offer a good salary, I suppose." "What do we pay Miss Bird?" "Only thirty pounds a year. She has never asked for more." "She's a good old creature. I'm sorry for her sister. Is she well off, do you know?" "I'm afraid very badly off." "Then how will they get on? I suppose Miss Bird has saved a bit. She's had no expenses here except her clothes for many years." "She told me she had saved about four hundred pounds." "Has she? Out of thirty pounds a year! It's extraordinary. Still, that won't give her much, capitalised, poor old creature. I'll tell you what, Nina, I'll talk it over with Dick and see if we can't fix up a little annuity for her. She's served us well and faithfully all these years, and we ought to do something for her." "Oh, Edward, I am so glad," said Mrs. Clinton. "I hoped you might see your way to helping her. She will be so very grateful." The Squire lifted himself out of his chair. "Oh yes, we'll do something or other," he said. "Well, get another governess then, Nina, and pay her—what do you want to pay her?—forty?" Mrs. Clinton hesitated a moment. "I want to get the best I can," she said. "I want to pay her eighty at least." The Squire, in his moods of good humour, was proof against all annoyance over other people's follies. He laughed. "Oh, I should make it a hundred if I were you," he said. "When the boys had Mr. Blake in their holidays," said Mrs. Clinton, "he had five pounds a week, and only had to teach them for an hour a day." "That's a very different thing," said the Squire. "Blake was a University man and a gentleman. You have to pay a private tutor well." "I want to get a lady," said Mrs. Clinton, "and I should like one who had been to a University." "Oh, my dear girl," said the Squire, moving off down the room, "have it your own way and pay her what you like. Now is there anything else I can do for you before I go and write a few letters?" "You are very kind, Edward, in letting me have my way about this. There is one more thing. If the children went to school they would have extra lessons for music and drawing or anything else that they might show talent in. Joan and Nancy have both got talent. I want to be able to have masters for them, from Bathgate—or perhaps even from London —for anything special that their governess cannot teach them." The Squire was at the door. "Well, upon my word!" he said, nodding his head at her. Then he went out of the room. CHAPTER II A QUESTION OF MATRIMONY Dick Clinton, the eldest son, arrived at Kencote at a quarter to eight, and went straight up to his room to dress. This young man—for, with his spare, upright frame, sleek head, and well-fitting clothes, he looked less than his thirty- four years—was as well served as his father, although he did not get his will by the same means; and the little wrongs of life, each of which the Squire, as they came along, dealt with as "a most infernal nuisance," he took more equably. He had brought his own servant with him, but had no need of him for the time, for his evening clothes were laid out for him, his shirt, with studs in and a collar attached, was hung over the back of a chair in front of the piled-up fire, and he had only to slip out of one suit and into another as if he had been in the house all day instead of having just reached the end of a journey of over three hours. These things were all a matter of course to him. The warm bright room, red-curtained, and quiet from the deep stillness of the country, gave him no particular sensation of pleasure when he entered it, except that he was cold from his journey and there was a good fire; nor, consciously, did the fact that this was his home, which he liked better than any other place, although he was more often than not away from it. He was thinking, as he began immediately in his quick neat way to change his clothes, that there was no apparent sign of the frost yielding, and fighting off his annoyance—for he hated to feel annoyed—at the stoppage of the morrow's hunting. He had very much wanted to hunt on the morrow, more than he usually wanted anything. And yet he was, though he hardly knew it, pleased to be at home, and in this room, which had been his ever since he had left the nursery. The little iron bedstead was the one on which he had slept as a boy; the flat tin bath, standing against a wall with the bath-mat hung over it, was only rather the worse for wear since those days; the worn carpet, now more worn, was the same; and the nondescript paper on the walls, which were hung with photographs of his "house" at Eton, showing him amongst the rest in five stages, from the little fair-haired boy in his broad collar sitting cross-legged on the grass, to the young man with folded arms in a place of honour by his tutor. There were later Cambridge groups too, exhibiting him as Master of the Drag, in the eighteenth-century dress of the True Blue Club, and in other conjunctures of pursuits and companions, but nothing to mark a later date than his University days, unless it were the big photographs in silver or tortoise-shell frames on the mantelpiece and writing-table. Probably nothing had been added to the decoration of the room for a dozen years, only a few things for use—a larger wardrobe and dressing-table from another room in the house, a big easy-chair, a fur rug by the bed. The room contained everything he needed in such a room, and since he needed nothing there to please the eye, it had received nothing all these years, and would receive nothing until he should leave it for good, when he should be no longer the eldest son, but in his turn the head of the house. He had nearly finished dressing when there was a knock at the door, and a voice, "Are you there, Dick? Can we come in?" His rather expressionless face changed a little, pleasantly. "Yes, come along," he called out, and his young sisters came in in their fresh muslin frocks, their masses of fair hair tied back with big blue ribbons. They had that prim air of being dressed, which is different in the case of girls not quite grown up from that of their elder sisters. They were remarkably alike and remarkably pretty, and Dick, who stood at the dressing-table in his shirt sleeves tying his tie, although he did not turn round to greet them, noticed their appearance with approval through the glass. "Well, Twankies," he said affably, as they went up to the mantelpiece and stood one on either side of the fire, "what's the news with you?" "We are to have a new preceptress," said Joan, the elder, "vice the old Starling, seconded for service elsewhere." Dick turned and stared at her. "Old Miss Bird leaving!" he exclaimed. "Surely not!" "You can't be more surprised than we were," said Nancy—the twins generally spoke alternately. "She broke it to us in floods of tears this afternoon. Joan cried too." "So did you," retorted Joan. "You blubbered like a seal." "And it did me credit," said Nancy, accepting the charge with complete equanimity. "What is she going for?" asked Dick. "She has to go and look after her sister, poor old thing!" said Joan. "And she doesn't think she knows enough to take us on any further." "We denied it hotly, to comfort her," continued Nancy. "But it's quite true. We have the brains of the family, and are now going to leave childish things behind us. I wish you'd make your watch ring, Dick." Dick pressed the spring of his repeater, and the twins listened to its tinkle in silence. Nancy sighed when he put it into his pocket. "Even that isn't the treat that it used to be," she said. "We are getting too old for these simple pleasures. Joan is beginning to take an interest in dress, and I am often to be seen absorbed in a book. Dick, shall you kiss Miss Bird when you say good-bye? There's nothing she would love better." "When is she going?" asked Dick, ignoring the question. "In about a week," Joan replied. "Dick, I think you ought to kiss her, if you possibly can. You are the eldest, and nearer her heart than any of us. She told us so." "I'll give you both a kiss and you can pass it on," said Dick, with an arm round each. "Come along down." They went down to the morning-room, and on the stroke of eight Dick led his mother into dinner, the Squire following. The twins settled themselves each in a corner of the big sofa in front of the fire. They usually read during the half- hour before they were summoned to dessert, but this evening they had something to talk about. "I wonder what she'll be like," Nancy began. "If Aunt Emmeline chooses her I should think she would be all right," said Joan. Nancy considered this. "Yes," she said. "But she will have to be kept in her place. Of course we have always been able to do exactly as we like with the old Starling. Joan, we must conserve our liberties." "Oh, I think we shall be able to do that," said Joan. "We must remain calm and polite." "And keep up our reputation for eccentricity," added Nancy. Then they both giggled. "You know, Joan, I think it's rather fun," Nancy proceeded. "I shan't a bit mind learning things now. I should have hated it a year or two ago. But you can't deny that it is rather slow at home." "That's why Cicely ran away," said Joan. "She simply couldn't stand it any longer. But it doesn't worry me like that. We have a pretty good time on the whole." "Yes, we see to that. But, of course, Cicely was much older. And after all, she didn't run very far—only to London, to see Walter and Muriel. And she soon came back." "She had to. I believe there was more in that than we knew about." Nancy looked up sharply. "Do you? Why?" she asked. "Oh, I don't know. I believe it had something to do with her engagement to Jim. She was married pretty soon after, anyhow, and there was no talk of it at the time." "I wonder if we could find out." "What's the good? And it's over two years ago now. I wonder if Dick would drive us over to Mountfield to see the babies to-morrow. He won't be able to hunt." "He won't want to see the babies. Men are so silly in that way. They pretend they don't care for them." "Father doesn't. He's just as silly about them as we are." "It isn't silliness in us. We are women, and we understand. If a man does like a baby it's just as a toy." "All the same, I think it does father credit liking his grandchildren. I should hardly have expected it of him." "He's getting softer in his old age. Nancy, I wonder how mother persuaded him to let us have a really good governess. He'd think it quite absurd that girls should want to learn anything." "My dear child, you could get anything you wanted out of father if you tackled him in the right way." "Only some things." "Anything, I said." "I'll bet you four weeks' pocket-money that you couldn't get him to let us hunt." "Oh, well! that's part of his religion. 'I may be old-fashioned—I dare say I am—but to see a pack of women scampering about the country and riding over the hounds—eh, what? No, thank you!' I didn't mean I could make him become a Roman Catholic, or anything of that sort. But I'll bet you what you like I'll get him to let us have a pony." "Four shillings?" "Right." "Do you think you really can, Nancy? It would be jolly." "I don't see why he shouldn't. Cicely always rode old Tommy, and so did we till he died." "Only surreptitiously, and bare-backed. We should have to have habits and all that, now." "Mother would see to that. Anyhow, I'll tackle him." "How shall you manage it?" "I shall think out a scheme." "Dick might help. Nancy, I'll bet you eight weeks' pocket-money you can't get two ponies." "I'll begin with one, and see how I get on. Now I think I'll immerse myself in a book." Presently they were called into the dining-room and sat, one on each side of their father, cracking and peeling walnuts for him and eating grapes on their own account, demure and submissively responsive to his affectionate jocularity. "What big girls you're both getting!" he said. "And going to be turned into blue-stockings, eh, what! Have to buy you a pair of spectacles each next time I go to Bathgate." He laughed his big laugh, drank half a glass of port, and beamed on them. He thought they were the prettiest pair of young feminine creatures he had ever seen, and so little trouble too! It was a good thing for a man to have sons to carry on his name, but young girls were an attractive addition to a family, and to the pleasures of a big house. He had thought it rather ridiculous of his wife to present him with the twins fifteen years before, and seven years after his youngest son was born, but he had long since forgiven her, and would not now have been without them for anything. When he and Dick were left alone over their wine there was a short pause, and then he cleared his throat and began: "I want to talk to you about something, Dick." Dick threw a glance at him and took a puff at his cigarette, but made no reply. The Squire seemed a little nervous, which was not usual with him. "Of course I don't want to interfere with you in any way," he said. "I've always given you a pretty free hand, even with the property, and all that sort of thing. I've consulted you, and you've had your way sometimes when we've differed. That's all right. It will belong to you some day, and you're—what?—thirty-four now." "Yes," said Dick. "Thirty-four. Time to think of settling down, eh?" The Squire brightened. "Yes, that's just it," he said. "Time to think of settling down. You've had enough soldiering —much more than I had. I never expected you would stick to it so long." "I don't want to leave the service yet," said Dick calmly. "I'm down here pretty often—almost all my leave." "Yes, yes, I know," said the Squire. "But if—if—— Well, look here, Dick—no use beating about the bush—why can't you get married?" Dick smiled. "It wouldn't be a bad scheme," he said. The Squire was pleased. He was getting on splendidly. "You feel that," he said. "Well, I haven't liked to say anything, but it's been on my mind for a long time." He then recapitulated the reasons why he thought Dick should marry, as he had enunciated them to Mrs. Clinton—his position as eldest son and heir to a fine property, his advancing age, the inadvisability of looking to Melbury Park as the cradle for a successor to the emoluments and amenities of Kencote, or of leaving it to Humphrey, the second son, to provide an heir. "The fact is, you ought to do it for your own sake," he wound up, "as well as for the sake of the place." "Whom do you want me to marry?" asked Dick, with a shade of flippancy. "Oh, well, I'd leave that to you," the Squire conceded handsomely. "You've a lot to offer. I should think you could pretty well take your pick—must have had plenty of opportunities all these years. You needn't look for money, though it's always useful. Any nice girl of good birth—of course you wouldn't want to marry one who wasn't. Good heavens! there must be a score of them presented every year, and you have been about London now for ten or twelve years. Do you mean to say you haven't got one in your mind?" "Haven't you?" asked Dick. "Well, if you like to consult me, why not Grace Ettien? Old Humphrey Meadshire would be delighted. She is his favourite granddaughter, and I'm sure he would like to see her married before he goes." "Grace is a charming girl," replied Dick. "But I don't want to marry my cousin." "Cousin! My dear fellow, old Humphrey and your grandfather were first cousins. You're surely not going to let that stand in the way." "I've known her ever since she was a baby. She's a baby now. It would be like marrying one of the Twankies." The Squire began to get fussed. "You're talking nonsense, Dick," he said. "She must be at least twenty-one. The fact is you have left it so long that an ordinary girl of a marriageable age seems a child to you. You'll be taking up with a widow next." There was an appreciable pause before Dick asked, "Well, should you object so much to that?" "Of course I should," said the Squire, "—for you. I shouldn't mind in the case of Humphrey, if she wasn't too old, and had enough money for the pair of them. I'm not going to pay any more of his debts. I'm sick of it." Dick allowed the conversation to travel down this byroad for a time, and when the Squire brought it back to the original track, said, "Well, I'll think over what you say. But I don't know that I should care, now, about marrying a young girl." The Squire turned this over in his mind, looking down on his plate, and his brows came together. "What do you mean?" he asked shortly. "You wouldn't want to marry an old woman." Dick took his cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it. "When I marry," he said decisively, "it will probably be a woman of nearer thirty than twenty." The Squire made the best of it. "Oh, well—as long as she's not over thirty," he said. "Girls don't marry so young as they used to. But—well, you must think of an heir, Dick." Dick made no reply to this, and the conversation ended. CHAPTER III EXIT MISS BIRD Miss Bird arose on the next morning to find her window glazed with frost, and it was characteristic of her and of the house in which she had lived for over thirty years that her first thought was, "No hunting to-day"; although the deprivation could not be expected to hold any disappointment for herself, or indeed to affect her in any way. Her second thought marked a drop to the sombre uneasiness in which she had spent wakeful hours during the night. She would not rise many more times in this familiar room, nor look out on to a scene which she had come to know so well at all seasons of the year that she could not help loving it. She would have liked to see the trees of the park, for a farewell, in their early June dress, the grass about them powdered with the yellow of buttercups. But she hoped so to see them again. She had been made to feel that she was parting from friends, that she was by virtue of her long and faithful service part of the family, that she would not lose them altogether. The Squire had said the day before, when he had made known to her that he had heard of her projected departure, "You must come and see us, you know, Miss Bird. The house won't be like itself without you." Could anything be more gratifying—and from such a man? Mrs. Clinton, of course, had been kindness itself, had said just the right things to make a person feel herself valued, and said them as if she meant them, as no doubt, dear lady, she did, for she was always sincere. And the darling children had cried—she should never forget that as long as she lived—when she had told them that she was going. Here the simple lady found a tear trickling down her own sharp nose, and put a hairpin in her mouth while she wiped it away. It seemed impossible that she should really be going. It was just upon thirty years since she had first come to Kencote, and it seemed like yesterday. She summoned up a rueful little smile when she recalled, in the light of her now assured position as "a member of the family," her palpitating nervousness on her introduction to the great house, so different from anything she had known. She had never been "out" before. She had had a good education, for those days, in the day school that her mother, the doctor's widow, and her elder sister had carried on in a little town in which she had been born, and had taught in it till she was twenty-eight. Then, after deep consultation, she had answered Mrs. Clinton's advertisement, and, her references having proved satisfactory, had been engaged to impart the rudiments of education to a child of five, which she had modestly thought she was as capable of doing as anybody, and at a salary that seemed to her munificent. She remembered arriving at Kencote on a spring evening and being received by Mrs. Clinton, the pretty young wife and mother, who had been almost as shy as herself, but had been so anxious that everything should be "nice" for her that she had soon lost her awe of the big house and the many servants; and even the figure in the background from which all the splendour around her emanated lost some of its imaginative terror, since the lady of the house had proved so accessibly human. She had thought the little boy, whom she had been taken to see in bed, a darling, and so quaint when he asked her solemnly if she could jump a pony over a log, because he could. She had liked his quiet, elderly nurse, who had come to talk to her in her schoolroom when he had gone to sleep. She had called her "miss," and shown that she had no wish to "presume," but only the wish to be friendly, and they had, in fact, remained friends for years. She had been greatly pleased with the size and comfort of her schoolroom, which she had entirely to herself, to read or write or play the piano in, outside hours of lessons, which were at first as short as was conceivably possible. And she had not in the least expected that there would be a maid for the schoolroom, who was, as she wrote to her sister, practically her own maid, calling her in the morning and bringing her a cup of tea, lighting a fire for her every evening in her bedroom as a matter of course, and indeed treating her as if she might be the mistress of the house. She had been happy at Kencote from the first, although she had been a good deal alone, for until her little pupil had grown bigger she had had all her meals sent up to her in the schoolroom, except on Sundays, when she lunched downstairs in charge of little Dick. Those were nervous occasions, for it took her a long time to get used to the Squire —the young Squire, as he was then—with his loud laugh and hearty ways, who used to chaff her at table in a way to cause her uneasiness, although he was never anything but kind, and she was assured, even when she blushed deepest, that his manner was only intended to put her at her ease and make her feel "one of the family." She had soon lost any awe she may have started with of Mrs. Clinton, although her respect for that lady's character had only grown with the passage of time. Mrs. Clinton used to sit with her sometimes in the schoolroom, and in the summer time they would work under the big lime in the garden while little Dick played about on the lawn. Miss Bird's simple gaiety of heart had had play, and her rather breathless volubility had never been checked by any stiffness on the part of Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Beach, the Rector of Kencote, and the Squire's half-brother, had always treated her with consideration, and his wife had made her feel at home in the rectory, and expected her to visit there occasionally on her own account. The Squire's six maiden aunts at the dower-house, all but one of whom were now dead, had also treated her kindly, but in a rather more patronising manner. She had not minded that. She had quite agreed with the opinion which underlay everything they said and did, though it was seldom expressed in words, that the Clintons of Kencote were great people in the land, and her native humility had led her to accept gratefully the attentions paid to her by them and their neighbours, and to "presume" on it no more than little Dick's nurse had presumed on her own mild gentility. She had found little Dick rather a handful as he grew older, but she had coped successfully with him, by the expenditure of much energy of speech and action, and had courageously beaten the beginnings of learning into his brain, so that he took a good place at his first school, and she was not disgraced. By that time Humphrey was ready for her guiding hand, and then Walter, and a few years later, Cicely, hailed with joy as a pupil whom she might train up to the fine finish; for there could be no talk of school for a girl Clinton, and Miss Bird's success with Dick had given her a high place as an instructress in the Squire's estimate of her abilities, so that there was never any idea of her being some day superseded, and the years at Kencote stretched happily in front of her. Cicely was nine, and Frank, the sailor, seven, when the twins arrived. The day of their birth was a good day in Miss Bird's annals. It meant more years still at Kencote, and by this time the idea of living with any other family would have been most distressing to her. And yet she would have had to seek another situation but for the arrival of the twins, for when she should have finished with Cicely she would be fifty only, and would not have put by enough money to enable her to retire. These are the hardships of a governess's lot, and Miss Bird had them fully in her mind, saving and skimping all through the fruitful years for a time when not only the opulences of existence in a house like Kencote should be hers no longer, but it might be difficult to make ends meet at all. The twins lifted a weight off her mind, which, with all her daily cheerfulness and courage, had never been quite absent from her; for another nine or ten years would just enable her to provide for her old age, and she knew that those nine or ten years would be hers if she could only keep her health, of which there seemed no reasonable doubt. "It is not many women in my position who are as fortunate as I," she had written to her sister at the time. "The Squire, who roared with laughter when he heard of the birth of the darling babies, said to me the first time he saw me afterwards, 'Well, that fixes you for another twenty years, Miss Bird.' And he added in a way which you might think profane if you had not heard him say it, 'Thank God, eh?'" Well, here was the end of those happy years, which seemed to have sped like a week or two since the birth of the twins. She had seen Walter and Cicely married and had dandled their babies. She had shared Mrs. Clinton's daily anxiety during the long months Dick had served in South Africa, and had taken his award of a D.S.O. almost as a personal compliment. She had been glad at all the joys of the family and saddened with their sorrows. She had seen the Squire grow from a handsome young man to an elderly one, and Mrs. Clinton's hair turn nearly white. She had boxes and drawers full of the presents she had received at Christmas and on her birthdays, which had never been forgotten, and the photographs of Clintons of all ages from babyhood upwards were displayed on every available standing place in her room. They were more to her than her sister or her sister's children, but the call had come to her to leave them and to go to a place where she would have to work hard and anxiously for the rest of her life on a very small pittance and in very narrow surroundings, and it had never occurred to her to shirk it. It had all fitted in—she felt that she had been "guided." The teaching which she had never doubted that she was able to give to Cicely now seemed to her inadequate for the finish of the twins' education, but she did doubt, now that her departure had been settled for her on other grounds, whether she would have had the strength to say so and cut herself adrift of her own accord. Here was matter for thankfulness—that she had been led to see what her duty was, and to do it. She would always have Kencote to look back to, and she was indeed fortunate to have spent the best part of her life in such a place, and with such people. The twins came in as she was finishing her toilette, to take her down to breakfast. This was a reversal of the procedure of the past, when it had been the first of her daily duties to hunt them out of whatever spot out of doors or in to which their vagrant fancy had led them, and see that they appeared to the public eye duly washed, combed, and brushed. They embraced her, enveloping her wizened form with their exuberant youth, like flowers round a peastick, and she was moved to the depths of her being, though all she said was, "Now, Joan 'n' Nancy, don't be rough. You can love a person without untidying her hair." "Are your nails quite clean, Starling darling?" asked Joan, taking one of her hands and examining it. "And are you quite sure you've brushed your teeth properly?" enquired Nancy. "Now don't tease, Joan 'n' Nancy," said Miss Bird, disengaging herself. "I shall only be here another week and you must try and be good girls and let me go away remembering that." "Joan was saying this morning as we were dressing," said Nancy, "that she was very sorry now to think of all the trouble she had given you, Starling darling, and if she could have the time over again she would behave very differently." "Idiot!" retorted Joan. "It's you who have given the trouble. Starling has often said that if it weren't for your example I should be a very good girl, haven't you, Starling darling?" "You would both be good girls if it wasn't for the other's example," replied Miss Bird. "And you can be dear good girls as good as gold and I hope you will when the new governess comes to teach you." "I hope we shall, but I doubt it," said Joan. "You see, Starling darling, what we would do for you we couldn't be expected to do for a stranger whom we didn't love, could we?" said Nancy. Miss Bird was moved by this, and would have liked to embrace the speaker, with words of endearment. But she had grown rather wary of exhibiting affection towards her pupils, who were apt to respond so voluminously as to leave her crumpled, if not actually dishevelled. "Well, if you love me as much as you say you do," she said, "you will remember all the things I have told you; now are you quite ready for breakfast, because it is time to go down?" "We told Dick you would like him to kiss you before you went, and I think he will," said Joan innocently, as they went down the broad staircase all three abreast. "Now, Joan, if you really said a thing like that—oh, take care! take care!" Miss Bird had tried to stop on the stairs and withdraw her arm from Joan's, who, assisted by Nancy on the other side, had led her on so that she tripped over the next step, and would have fallen but for the firm grasp of the twins. She was led into the dining-room, protesting volubly, until she saw that Mrs. Clinton and Dick were there, when the episode ended. When breakfast was over the Squire surprised her by asking her immediate attendance in his room, to which she followed him across the hall in a flutter of apprehension. It would not be quite true to say that she had never been into this room during the thirty years of her sojourn at Kencote, but it was certainly the first time she had entered it on the Squire's invitation. He did not ask her to take a seat, nor did he take one himself, but stood in front of the fire with his coat tails over his arm and his hands in his pockets. "There's a little matter of business I should like to settle with you, Miss Bird," he said. "You've lived here a considerable number of years, and you've done remarkably well by us and the children. If everybody did their duty in life as well as you, Miss Bird, the world 'ud be a better place than it is, by George! Now I want to do a little something for you, as you've done so much for us, and I've talked it over with Dick, and we are going to buy you a little annuity of fifty pounds a year, which with what my wife tells me you've saved will put you out of anxiety for the future; and I'll tell you this, Miss Bird, that I never—Eh, what! Oh, my good woman ... God's sake ... here, don't take on like that ... Gobblessme, what's to be done?" For Miss Bird, overcome by this last great mark of esteem, had broken down and was now sobbing into her handkerchief. Knowing, however, the Squire's dislike of a scene she succeeded in controlling herself, and addressed him with no more than an occasional hiccup. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Clinton; I couldn't help it and it's too much and I thank you from the bottom of my heart and shall never forget it as long as I live and it's just like all the rest of the kindness I've received in this house which I could never repay if I lived to be a hundred." "Well, I'm very glad it meets your views, Miss Bird," said the Squire, greatly relieved at the subsidence of emotion, and anxious to escape further thanks. "And I assure you the obligation's still on our side. Now, I must write some letters, and I dare say you've got something to do, too." Miss Bird retired to her bedroom where, unrebuked, she shed her tears of thankfulness, then wiped her eyes and sponged her face and went about the duties of the day. These did not, this morning, include lessons for the twins, for it was Saturday, which was for them a holiday, when complete freedom was tempered only by the necessity of "practising." Dick had refused to drive them over to Mountfield to see their sister and her babies, but had offered them a walk to the dower-house during the course of the morning. "I wonder what he wants to go there for?" said Joan, as they went upstairs. "There's more in this," said Nancy, "than meets the eye." There did not, however, seem to be more in it than a natural desire to see a house empty which one has always known occupied, and this desire the twins shared. They found Dick in an affable mood as they walked across the park together—the sort of affectionately jovial mood of which they had occasionally taken advantage to secure a temporary addition to their income. Indeed, it seemed to have brought Dick himself a reminder of his young sisters' financial requirements, for he asked them, "Have you saved up enough money for your camera yet, Twankies?" Neither of them replied for the moment, then Joan said rather stiffly, "We shan't be able to buy that for some time." "Why, you only wanted twenty-five shillings to make it up a month ago, and I gave you a sovereign towards it," said Dick. Another short pause, and then Nancy said, "You gave it us!" "Yes," said Dick, "to buy a camera. I'm not certain you didn't screw it out of me. I never quite know whether it's my idea or yours when I tip you Twankies. Come now, what have you done with that sovereign?" "We have spent it on a good object," said Joan. "But we do want the camera most frightfully badly, and if you would like to contribute to the fund again it would save us many weary months of waiting." "To say nothing of a severe economy painful to our generous natures," added Nancy. "Not till I know what you spent the last contribution on," said Dick. "You're getting regular young spendthrifts. I shall have to look into this, or you'll be ruining me by and by." "Won't you give us anything more unless we tell you?" enquired Joan; and Nancy amended the question: "Will you give us something more if we do tell you?" "I'll see," said Dick. "Come, out with it!" "Well, it's nothing to be ashamed of," said Joan. "We wanted to buy the old Starling a really good present, and out of our own money." "It took the form of a pair of silver-backed brushes with cupids' heads on them, and cost three pounds seventeen and sixpence," added Nancy. "They are not cupids, but angels," said Joan, "which are much more adapted to Starling's tastes." "Well—cupids or angels—it cleaned us entirely out," concluded Nancy. Dick put an arm round the shoulders of each and gave them a squeeze as they walked. "You're a pair of topping good Twankies," he said. "I'll start your new camera fund. I'll give it you now." "Thanks awfully, Dick," said Joan, as he took out his sovereign purse, "but I think we'd rather you didn't. You see, it's rather a special occasion—the poor old Starling going away—and we wanted to give her something that would really cost us something." "I agree with my sister," said Nancy. "But thanks awfully all the same, Dick. You're always a brick." "Well, I respect the delicacy of your feelings, Twanks," said Dick. "But isn't anybody ever going to be allowed to contribute to the camera fund? How long does the embargo last?" "There's a good deal in that," said Joan thoughtfully. "Of...