“Man marries to satisfy his own wishes, not his mother’s. I have other ideas.”
“Then what are they, sir?” said Mrs Rolph scornfully.
“That’s my business,” he said, taking out his cigar-case.
“Then, am I to understand that you intend to form an alliance with the family of our keeper?” said Mrs Rolph sarcastically.
“Bah!” roared her son fiercely; and he strode out of the room and banged the door.
“Gone!” cried Mrs Rolph, wringing her hands and making her rings crackle one against the other. “I was mad to have the wretched girl here. What fools we women are.”
Her son was saying precisely the same as he marched away.
“Does she think me mad?” he growled. “Marry freckle-faced Madge!—form an alliance with Ben Hayle’s Judy! Not quite such a fool. I’ll go and do it, and show the old girl a trick worth two of that. She’s as clean-limbed a girl as ever stepped, and there’s a look of breed in her that I like. Must marry, I suppose. Ck! For the sake of the estate, join the two then—I will—at once. It will stop their mouths at home, and make an end of the Madge business. She’ll be all right, and begin kissing and hugging her and calling her dearest in a week. That’s the way to clear that hedge, so here goes.”
He stopped, took a short run and cleared the hedge at the side of the lane in reality to begin with, before striking off through one of the adjacent fir woods, so as to reach the sandy lanes and wild common on the way to Brackley.