Mr. Gibson was very glad in his heart that the young men of the house were out of the way; he did not want his little Molly to be passing from Scylla to Charybdis; and, as he afterwards scoffed at himself for thinking, he had got an idea that all young men were wolves in chase of his one ewe-lamb.
"She knows nothing of the pleasure in store for her," he replied; "and I'm sure I don't know what feminine preparations she may think necessary, or how long they may take. You'll remember she is a little ignoramus, and has had no … training in etiquette; our ways at home are rather rough for a girl, I'm afraid. But I know I could not send her into a kinder atmosphere than this."
When the Squire heard from his wife of Mr. Gibson's proposal, he was as much pleased as she at the prospect of their youthful visitor; for he was a man of a hearty hospitality, when his pride did not interfere with its gratification; and he was delighted to think of his sick wife's having such an agreeable companion in her hours of loneliness. After a while he said,—"It's as well the lads are at Cambridge; we might have been having a love-affair if they had been at home."
"Well—and if we had?" asked his more romantic wife.
"It wouldn't have done," said the Squire, decidedly. "Osborne will have had a first-rate education—as good as any man in the county—he'll have this property, and he's a Hamley of Hamley; not a family in the shire is as old as we are, or settled on their ground so well. Osborne may marry where he likes. If Lord Hollingford had a daughter, Osborne would have been as good a match as she could have required. It would never do for him to fall in love with Gibson's daughter—I shouldn't allow it. So it's as well he's out of the way."
"Well! perhaps Osborne had better look higher."
"Perhaps! I say he must." The Squire brought his hand down with a thump on the table, near him, which made his wife's heart beat hard for some minutes. "And as for Roger," he continued, unconscious of the flutter he had put her into, "he'll have to make his own way, and earn his own bread; and, I'm afraid, he's not getting on very brilliantly at Cambridge. He mustn't think of falling in love for these ten years."
"Unless he marries a fortune," said Mrs. Hamley, more by way of concealing her palpitation than anything else; for she was unworldly and romantic to a fault.
"No son of mine shall ever marry a wife who is richer than himself with my good will," said the Squire again, with emphasis, but without a thump.
"I don't say but what if Roger is gaining five hundred a year by the time he's thirty, he shall not choose a wife with ten thousand pounds down; but I do say, if a boy of mine, with only two hundred a year—which is all Roger will have from us, and that not for a long time—goes and marries a woman with fifty thousand to her portion, I'll disown him—it would be just disgusting."