"Well, I don't know. Perhaps he mayn't mean it. I don't think I ought to have spoken of it."
"If it's in the newspaper I suppose I should have heard of it, unless you sent it back without letting me see it."
"She said we were to keep it, and it's because of that, I'm sure. She was always the most good-natured woman in the world. I don't know what we should have done if we hadn't found such a neighbour as Mrs. Sturt."
"But what is it, mamma, that you are speaking of in the newspapers?"
"Mr. Rowan says—Oh, dear! I wish I'd let you come to it yourself. How very odd that he should get up and say that kind of thing in public before all the people. He says;—but any way I know he means it because he's so honest. And after all if he means it, it doesn't much matter where he says it. Handsome is that handsome does. There, my dear; I don't know how to tell it you, so you had better read it yourself."
Rachel with eager hands took the paper, and began the speech as her mother had done, and read it through. She read it through till she came to those words, and then she put the paper down beside her. "I understand what you mean, mamma, and what Mrs. Sturt meant; but Mr. Rowan did not mean that."
"What did he mean, my dear?"
"He meant them to understand that he intended to become a man of Baslehurst like one of themselves."
"But then why did he talk about finding a wife there?"
"He wouldn't have said that, mamma, if he had meant anything particular. If anything of that sort had been at all in his mind, it would have kept him from saying what he did say."