"Lucius, my dear, I want you to do me a great favour," she said as she sat by her son in the Hamworth fly.
"A great favour, mother! of course I will do anything for you that I can."
"It is that you will bear with Sir Peregrine to-night."
"Bear with him! I do not know exactly what you mean. Of course I will remember that he is an old man, and not answer him as I would one of my own age."
"I am sure of that, Lucius, because you are a gentleman. As much forbearance as that a young man, if he be a gentleman, will always show to an old man. But what I ask is something more than that. Sir Peregrine has been farming all his life."
"Yes; and see what are the results! He has three or four hundred acres of uncultivated land on his estate, all of which would grow wheat."
"I know nothing about that," said Lady Mason.
"Ah, but that's the question. My trade is to be that of a farmer, and you are sending me to school. Then comes the question, Of what sort is the schoolmaster?"
"I am not talking about farming now, Lucius."
"But he will talk of it."