Michael Man’s good constitution, excellent health and temperate habits were all so much in his favor that in a few days he began to get well, and before the week was out he came downstairs and joined the family at their meals.
The rector came over every day to inquire after Mike and to bring reports of Gentleman Geff, who was at death’s door with brain fever and not expected to recover. Longman, the colossus, was established in the sick-room as his constant attendant. Elspeth remained at the rectory for the present. She would not leave the family under present circumstances. Meanwhile Randolph Hay had given orders to his bailiff, Prowt, to have the gamekeeper’s cottage put in complete repair and refurnished for the Longmans.
Christmas came, and the young couple at the Hall sent invitations to their few intimate friends to come and spend the sacred festival with them. They were loyal to the humblest among these. They really invited not only Mr. and Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Montgomery and Dr. Hobbs, but old Dandy from Medge and Longman and Elspeth from the rectory. Will Walling and Michael Man were still staying in the house.
The young doctor, the rector and his wife and daughter accepted the invitation, but Elspeth and Longman declined it on the ground that she would have to stay at home to mind the baby and he to attend to the sick man; but these were not the only reasons; they both felt that their presence, as even Christmas guests at the Hall, would be a social solecism; for as Elspeth said to her son:
“These generous young people from the woods of a foreign country don’t know what they are a-doing of when they invite you and me to dinner, Samson! It might do well enough in the mines of the backwoods. But here! Why, bless ’em, if they go on in this way not a single soul among the country families will have a thing to do with ’em, if they are the lord and lady of the manor! But they’ll find out better.”
Longman fully agreed with his mother, and so he wrote his excuses for both.
Old Dandy Quin also wrote from Medge and begged to be excused on two pleas: the first that he was not able to make the long journey from one end of England to the other twice in ten days; and the second was that he wanted to eat his Christmas dinner with his new-found relatives. He added the information that he did not mean to carry out his first intention of buying an annuity with his savings, but that he should go into partnership with his nephew, and that in the spring they should move into a larger house and increase their business.
He concluded with a piece of news that made Ran, Judy and Mike break into one of their shouting Grizzly Gulch laughs.
He wrote that poor Miss Lyddy Legg—and just think of the queenly and beautiful Lamia Leegh being called “poor Miss Lyddy Legg!”—was very broken-hearted, though she need not be, for it was not her fault that she had been taken in by a false marriage; and that everybody was as kind to her as kind could be, and that he himself—Dandy Quin—had so much respect and sympathy for her that he offered to marry her out of hand and make an honest woman of her and leave her all his property at his death! but that the poor, misguided and demented young woman, who did not know what was for her own good, had refused him with scorn and insolence. There!
Think of the vain and haughty Lamia Leegh receiving an offer of marriage from Dandy Quin!