Mr. Staples gave what help he could towards making the tired boy comfortable, and then returned to the subject in all their minds. 'So your father never told you those particulars?'
'No; I think it was his great object not to dwell on them, nor let us look back with regret or anger.'
'Just like him. I never saw such a case, never! I'll show you a remarkable letter of his. But, first, you ought to understand the way the matter stood. To begin with the relationship.'
'I know nothing about them, only that my father and mother were second cousins; but I don't even know to which of them my great-uncle Underwood was really uncle.'
'To your mother. He had very strong feelings as to the duty of the head of a family, and made his house a home for all that needed it. When Miss Mary was sent home an orphan from India—James's, his favourite brother's, child—he asked his cousin's widow, Mrs. Edward Underwood, to bring her boy, superintend the house, and look after the little girl; and she was glad enough, for the captain had died of his wounds at Waterloo, and she had little but her widow's pension.'
'I know,' said Felix. 'Then whose son is the Squire?'
'The son of Lancelot, who was the second brother, between the Reverend Fulbert (your great-uncle) and James, your mother's father. So he was heir-at-law, but he was a wildish sort of lad, unfit to take Holy Orders; and there came to be an understanding that if his uncle would buy his commission and purchase his steps, he would not look for the Rectory and the estate. On that understanding your father took Orders and married; but on old Mr. Underwood's death there was only a draught of a will, which he had not been in a state to execute, leaving a handsome legacy to Fulbert, but the whole property to your father and mother. It seemed a matter of course that, as the only compensation, Fulbert should have presented his cousin Edward to the vicarage—£400 a year; but as ill-luck would have it, he took offence at some sermon—a Lent one about self-indulgence, I believe it was—swore he wouldn't have a Puseyite parson preaching at him, and went into such a rage, that it is thought to be partly by way of getting off giving him the living, and getting it held for his son.'
'I see,' said Felix.
'It was a dirty trick; and I was a younger man at the time, and it struck me that if your father chose to try the case, the testator's intentions being clear, and instructions in his own hand extant, it was ten to one it might be given in his favour. I even took a counsel's opinion, thinking that at any rate an intimation that the case was to be tried before possession was given up, might bring Fulbert to terms with regard to the living.'
'And he would not?'