‘Dear Phœbe,’ cried Cecily, ‘I am so thankful that she is spared a long attachment. It was telling on her already!’
‘Oh, we should have put a stop to the affair if he had gone out to Canada,’ roundly asserted Mervyn; ‘but of course he knew better—’
‘Not at all—this was quite a surprise.’
Mervyn recollected in time that it was best that Miss Charlecote should so imagine, and reserved for his wife’s private ear his conviction that the young fellow had had this hope in his eye when refusing the partnership. Such smartness and foresight commanded his respect as a man of the world, though maybe the women would not understand it. For Phœbe’s interest, he must encourage the lady in her excellent intentions.
‘It is very handsome in you, Miss Charlecote—very handsome—and I am perfectly unprejudiced in assuring you that you have done the very best thing for yourself. Phœbe is a good girl, and devoted to you already.’
‘Indeed she is,’ said Cecily. ‘She looks up to you so much!’
Somehow Honor did not want Mrs. Fulmort to assure her of this.
‘And as to the place,’ continued Mervyn, ‘you could not put it into better hands to get your people out of their Old World ways. A young man like that, used to farming, and with steam and mechanics at his fingers’ ends, will make us all look about us.’
‘Perhaps,’ murmured poor Honor, with quailing heart.
‘John Raymond and I were looking about the Holt the other day,’ said Mervyn, ‘and agreeing how much more could be made of it. Clear away some of those hedgerows—grub up a bit of copse or two—try chemical manures—drain that terrible old marsh beyond the plantation—and have up a good engine-house where you have those old ramshackle buildings at the Home Farm! Why, the place will bring in as much again, and you’ve hit on the very man to carry it out. He shall try all the experiments before I adopt them.’