"You shan't anger me, try as you will, Humphrey. I'm here, as your elder brother and the head of the family, to offer sympathy to you in your trouble; and I'll ax you to leave my family alone. Young men will be young men, and as for Ned, if I be the only one that feels as I should feel to him, 'tis because I'm the only one that understands his nature and his gifts. He'll astonish you yet, and all of us. The books he reads! You wait. Soon ripe, soon rotten. He's taking his time, and if he wants a wife, 'tis only in reason that the future head of the family should have a wife; and why not? He shan't have to work as I have worked."
"A fool's word! What made you all you are? Work and the love of it. Yet you let him go to the devil in idleness."
"If you'd but suffer me to finish my speech—I say that Ned won't work as I have worked—with my limbs and muscles. He's got a brain, and the time be coming when he'll use it."
"Never."
"Anyway a settled life is the first thing, and the mind free to follow its proper bent. And I don't say 'no' to his marrying, because the case is different from Rupert's, and 'tis fitting that he should do so."
"But Rupert must not. And you pass for a just and sensible man!"
"'Tis strange—something in the Baskerville character that draws her—but so it is," continued the master of Cadworthy, ignoring his brother's last remark. "In a word, when he found she was free, my Ned took up with Cora Lintern, and she's going to marry him. But 'tis to be a full year from this sad Christmas—I bargained for that and will have it so."
"'Going to take him'? Going to take your son!" cried the other.
"She is; and I sanction it; for I found her a very different maiden to what you did."
"Going to marry Ned! Going from my Mark to your Ned!"