“I do not quite understand it, but I have not the slightest objection.”
“She thinks that he is interfering with young Gresham about the crown property. I had no idea that she had so much business at her fingers’ ends. When I first proposed the matter she took it up quite as a lawyer might, and seemed to have forgotten altogether what occurred about that other matter.”
“I wish I could forget it also,” said Mr. Sowerby.
“I really think that she does. When I was obliged to make some allusion to it—at least I felt myself obliged, and was sorry afterwards that I did—she merely laughed—a great loud laugh as she always does, and then went on about the business. However, she was clear about this, that all the expenses of the election should be added to the sum to be advanced by her, and that the house should be left to you without any rent. If you choose to take the land round the house you must pay for it, by the acre, as the tenants do. She was as clear about it all as though she had passed her life in a lawyer’s office.”
My readers will now pretty well understand what last step that excellent sister, Mrs. Harold Smith, had taken on her brother’s behalf, nor will they be surprised to learn that in the course of the day Mr. Sowerby hurried back to town and put himself into communication with Miss Dunstable’s lawyer.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
IS THERE CAUSE OR JUST IMPEDIMENT?
I now purpose to visit another country house in Barsetshire, but on this occasion our sojourn shall be in the eastern division, in which, as in every other county in England, electioneering matters are paramount at the present moment. It has been mentioned that Mr. Gresham, junior, young Frank Gresham as he was always called, lived at a place called Boxall Hill. This property had come to his wife by will, and he was now settled there,—seeing that his father still held the family seat of the Greshams at Greshamsbury.
At the present moment Miss Dunstable was staying at Boxall Hill with Mrs. Frank Gresham. They had left London,—as, indeed, all the world had done, to the terrible dismay of the London tradesmen. This dissolution of Parliament was ruining everybody except the country publicans, and had of course destroyed the London season among other things.