"Certainly she should. Orphan Dinah took you very near a year ago, and the marriage ought to be next spring in my opinion."
"No doubt it will be," answered John; "but I will have something definite. Love-making is all right, but I want to be married and take the lodge at Holne Chase."
"The lodge Neddy Tutt's parents keep?" said Susan.
"Yes; and by the same token, Neddy, your mother expects you Sunday."
"I be coming," said Neddy Tutt, and John continued. "I'm lodging with 'em, but they're very wishful to be off, and they will be so soon as ever I'm spliced. The Honourable Childe wants me at the lodge and I want to be there."
Susan, who had a mind so sensitive that she often suspected uneasiness in other minds where none existed, was reflecting now, dimly, that the newcomers would not find this subject very interesting. They sat stolidly and quietly listening and eating their supper. Occasionally Maynard spoke to Susan; Palk had not made a remark since he came to the meal.
Now, however, Joe relieved his daughter's care. He enjoyed exposition and, for the benefit of his new men, he explained a relationship somewhat complicated.
"We be talking in the air no doubt for your ears," he said "But I hope you'll feel yourselves interested in my family before long, just as I shall be in your families, if you've got relations that you like to talk about. Me and this young man's father are cousins in a general way of speaking, and his father, by name Benjamin Bamsey, was married twice. First time he married the widow of Patrick Waycott, who was a footman at the Honourable Childe's, lord of Holne Manor, and she come to my cousin Benjamin with one baby daughter, Dinah by name. So the girl, now up home twenty-three, is just 'Orphan Dinah,' because her mother died of consumption a year after she married Mr. Bamsey. Then Benjamin wedded again—a maiden by the name of Faith West; and she's the present Mrs. Ben Bamsey, and this chap is her son, and Jane Bamsey is her daughter. And now Johnny here be tokened to his foster sister, 'Orphan Dinah,' who, of course, ain't no relation of his. I hope I make myself clear."
"Nothing could be clearer," said Lawrence Maynard.
"What did the footman die of?" asked Palk slowly.