"Make him stay on, do; I like him, and he wakes the General up!"
But she and he had some pitched battles about the present generation. Di was for progress and liberty of speech, and action for all women; he was by way of relegating them to the back shelf. Sometimes he amused himself by rousing her ire, and would be dogmatic in denouncing modern habits with which he was really in sympathy.
Rowena listened to the two, and smiled to herself. It did not hurt Di to hear a man of the world's impression of the present race of girls. She had had very few who had hitherto dared to criticize and contradict her. One bond they had in common was their love for horses. Hector said he meant to breed them when he took possession of his place.
"I'm having proper stables built before I get in," he said. "I'm sick of these cars. Give me a horse, and I want nothing more."
"Hear! Hear!" said Di, and the next morning she and he rode off together. Hector was very sociably inclined—a marked contrast to the General. In a few days' time, he was friends with the Arnold Rashleighs, and with several of the other neighbours round. He had invitations to shoot and fish and to dine and sleep, and sometimes his host did not see him for three or four days.
But on Sundays he invariably turned up at the morning service in the little church of Abertarlie.
Di laughed at him for it one day.
"You are going back to the training of your youth," she said. "Church-going is not the fashion now."
"Neither is heaven or hell," he retorted; "but I'm not a man of fashion—never was."
She looked at him meditatively.