‘Old sneak; I wonder how he ferreted it out. Is there no end of a jaw coming, Con?’
‘I don’t know. Uncle Frank seemed quite knocked down and wretched over it. He said something about feeling hopeless, and the old blood coming out to be your ruin.’
‘Of course it’s the old blood! How did he miss it, and turn into the intolerable old dry fogey that he is, without a notion of anything fit for a gentleman?’
‘Now, Herbert—’
‘Oh yes. You should just hear what the other fellows say about him. Their mothers and their sisters say there is not so stupid a place in the county, he hasn’t a word to say for himself, and they would just as soon go to Portland at once as to a party here.’
‘Then it is a great shame! I am sure Aunt Mary works hard to make it pleasant for them!’
‘Oh yes, good soul, she does, she can’t help it; but when people have stuck in the mud all their lives, they can’t know any better, and it is abominably hard on a fellow who does, to be under a man who has been an office cad all his life, and doesn’t know what is expected of a gentleman! Screwing us all up like beggars—’
‘Herbert, for shame! for shame! As if he was obliged to do anything at all for us!’
‘Oh, isn’t he? A pretty row my mother would kick up about his ears if he did not, when I must come after him at this place, too!’
‘I think you are very ungrateful,’ said Constance, with tears, ‘when they are so good to us.’