"I don't approve or disapprove of it. He's his own master."
"But you do approve, you know, as you countenance it; and there cannot possibly be a sweeter girl than Florence Burton. We all like her, and I'm sure you seem to take to her thoroughly."
"Take to her; yes, I take to her very well. She's ladylike, and though she's no beauty, she looks pretty, and is spirited. And I daresay she's clever."
"And so good."
"If she's good, that's better than all. Only I don't see what they're to live on."
"But as she is here, you will go with us to the great house?"
Mrs. Clavering never asked her husband anything in vain, and the rector agreed to go. He apologized for this afterwards to his son by explaining that he did it as a duty. "It will serve for six months," he said. "If I did not go there about once in six months, there would be supposed to be a family quarrel, and that would be bad for the parish."
Harry was to remain only a week at Clavering, and the dinner was to take place the evening before he went away. On that morning he walked all round the park with Florence,—as he had before often walked with Julia,—and took that occasion of giving her a full history of the Clavering family. "We none of us like my cousin Hugh," he had said. "But she is at least harmless, and she means to be good-natured. She is very unlike her sister, Lady Ongar."
"So I should suppose, from what you have told me."
"Altogether an inferior being."