"If you go, you must observe strict punctuality as to meals, and you must do without games on Sunday, and bally-ragging generally. That's about all, and it isn't so very desperate."
"Not a bit; and with your sister there it will be like heaven. Oh, you've got to get me asked, Humphrey."
"I'll do what I can. By the by, don't say a word about the Amberley business at Kencote. He doesn't like that mentioned."
"Doesn't he? Righto! It was the way your young sister showed up in that that clinched it with me. She was topping. Looked as pretty as a picture, and never let them rattle her once. They took her off the moment she'd given her evidence, and I never got the chance of a word with her. I've actually never seen her since, and that's a couple of months ago now. Well, here we are. I'm going to enjoy myself to-day."
Humphrey used his own discretion as to disclosing something of the state of his friend's affections when he and Susan went down to Kencote for Christmas.
"Look here, father, I've got something rather interesting to tell you. Bobby Trench—oh, I know you don't like him, but you'll find him much improved—wants to pay his addresses to Joan."
"What!" The Squire's expression was a mixture of disgust and incredulity.
"It would be a very good match for her. They've been chasing him for years. He'll come in for all that money of Lady Sophia's, you know, as well as everything else."
"Oh, a good match!" exclaimed the Squire impatiently. "I wouldn't have him about the place if he was the heir to a dukedom. And Joan is hardly more than a child. Time enough for all that in three or four years. And when the time comes I hope it will bring somebody as unlike Master Trench as possible."
Humphrey was rather dashed at this reception of his news. He was not quite so unaffected by Bobby Trench's place in the world and his prospective wealth as he had declared himself to be. To see one of his sisters married thus had struck him more and more as being desirable, and he had thought that his father would take much the same view, after a first expression of surprise and independence.