"Only until he begins to say why he has come, and the rain has spoiled the hay," he said, with another laugh.
CHAPTER III.
With the peculiar good fortune which has attended the oracle of all ages, Digby's prediction came true, and Jack did come home that evening when every one had stopped talking about him, and there was a universal tendency among his brothers and sisters to avoid the topic of his arrival. It was tea-time, and the Squire was standing in the middle of the drawing-room and allowing himself to be coaxed on to his favorite subjects by certain methods known only to his children; though Lady Joan, with her accustomed shrewdness, and partly from a desire to fall into the spirit of her surroundings, however dull they might be, also lent her aid in drawing him out, and Sir Marcus became a willing and unconscious victim.
"Interested in duck-breeding, did you say?" he exclaimed eagerly; "then you shall see something you can't see in Pont Street or any of your swell West End places," forgetting for the moment his envy of Lady Joan's charming house in town. "You shall come over one of our famous duckeries, and see what you've been eating with green peas all the season, and learn how we breed ducks in Murville. It isn't every one who gets the opportunity of coming to the very centre of the most important village industry in the home counties, and it is quite time you saw how the laboring man is kept from starvation by a little help and a little encouragement. Why, let me tell you, though I am a modest man, God knows, and it is not I who should say it, that if it had not been for my letters to the papers, the duck interest would have completely died out in Murville long ago. And where would the working-man have been then? Do you know, my dear young lady, that I, that is, Murville, or rather, I should say, my letter to the county paper has been quoted in the 'Daily Liberal'? There's fame for you! You didn't know you had come to such a world-renowned place, eh? Ah, we are not so hidden in Murville, after all; that is, the—the cause of the elevation of the laborer has its opportunities even in a small village like this."
"Even a duck has its portion in the scheme of Providence," murmured Lady Joan into her tea-cup; "I wish I could find out all these wonderful things for myself, they are so improving. For instance, I shall never mind paying a guinea a couple in February, now that I know I shall be doing a great national good by buying them."
"You have got hold of quite the wrong idea," interrupted Digby, "a most anti-socialistic idea, of which I could not believe even you to be capable. As if the luxury of the rich could be of the least avail—"
A jaded expression crept over the visage of Helen at this point, and his younger brothers irreverently urging him to "play lightly, as they had heard that old wheeze before," the derided prophet merely regretted the absence of bears, and smiled sadly. His father gladly filled up the breach.
"Eh, what? Socialism, did you say? Of course it is Socialism in its noblest form, when—when we get a notice in the 'Daily Liberal,' and without paying for it too! It was none of your cooked-up jobs, carried through with bribery and corruption, let me tell you, it was all fair and above board; Editor's a personal friend of mine, don't you see, and he wouldn't have quoted from my letter if he hadn't thoroughly appreciated it. You can't get over facts with any amount of Socialism; give me facts, that's what I always say," concluded Sir Marcus, happily innocent that all his life his one aim had been to avoid facts and the unpleasant truths they had forced upon him.
"I can hear wheels," said Lady Raleigh, suddenly. As she had made the same remark at intervals during the day, no one paid her any particular attention except Helen, who put out a protecting hand to the tea-table, as if she anticipated a rush. This time, however, there was undoubtedly a carriage coming up the drive; and Lady Raleigh rose to her feet unsteadily, and became melodramatic.