Hoping that she would, but a little doubtful of it, Norman presently went to bed.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
FRED COMFREY
"Sir William Eldridge, who was recently raised to the peerage, has taken the title Lord Eldridge of Hayslope."
Mr. Comfrey read out this item of information from his newspaper, as he sat at breakfast with his wife and his son, and expressed his satisfaction over it. "I'm glad it has been settled like that," he said. "He will simply be called Lord Eldridge, and there can't possibly be any objection to it. Lord Hayslope would have made a good title, but under the circumstances it would hardly have done."
"I don't see why not," said Mrs. Comfrey. "It would be ridiculous of Colonel Eldridge to object, and he'd have no grounds for it either."
Mr. Comfrey was a mild-mannered man, who took his opinions upon worldly affairs very much on his wife's recommendation; but as she took hers upon ecclesiastical affairs chiefly on his, he never felt his self-respect wounded by her somewhat peremptory methods. She was a short, broad woman with a somewhat masculine type of countenance, which, indeed, had been reproduced with surprising fidelity in her son. She might have been expected, from her appearance, to be immovable in whatever opinions she did hold, in face of whatever opposition. But she was very apt to weaken on them if they proved unwelcome to those with whom she wished to stand well. Perhaps if her husband had ever tried to controvert them he might have secured an occasional option upon views of his own; but he would have had to do so long before this, for by now she had established her ascendancy. Fred seemed to pay no respect to them at all, with the consequence that she often wavered before him. But they remained good friends. She admired her son, built in her own image, and, if he did not admire her, he liked her treatment of him since he had returned home, which was very different from what it had been when he was a boy.
Fred's whole attitude towards his home had changed since his boyhood. Hayslope was a college living, and a small one at the best of times. Mr. Comfrey, who had gained no particular scholastic honour, would not have been offered it if its emoluments had been enough to attract a bigger gun. He had scarcely any money of his own to supplement them, but his wife had brought him a few hundred a year, with which they had managed to get along. There had never been enough for anything but a skimped existence, and Fred had not enjoyed the same advantages as those of other sons of the clergy in the parishes around Hayslope, still less of the well-endowed laity. He had been glad enough to get away, at an early age, and not for some years had had any desire to come back again.