“Master Richard,” said Humphrey, with a happy smile on his face, “you’ve give up to me my little love, and made me feel as if there was nothing else in the world I’d care to have. Look ye here, sir, it’s stunned me like; it’s hard, you know, to understand. I’m only a poor fellow like, come what may; and if I had the place—oh, you know, it just sounds like so much nonsense!—what could me and Polly do with it, when we could be happier at the lodge? It makes me laugh—it do indeed, sir. You, you see, have been made a scholar, and have your big friends—been made a gentleman, in fact—and nothing would ever make one of me. Let’s go on, then, as we are, sir. I’m willing. Only sometimes Polly, maybe, ’ll want a new dress, or a ribbon, or something of that kind; and then, if I ask you, you’ll give me half a sovereign, or may be a sovereign, eh?”
“Half a sovereign—a sovereign! Why, man, can you not realise that you have from now eight thousand a year?”
“No, sir, that I can’t,” said Humphrey, smiling pleasantly. “I never was good at figures. Dogs, you know, or horses, or anything in the farming line, I’m pretty tidy at; but figures bothers me. Let things stop as they are, sir; I won’t say a word, even to Polly.”
“Humphrey,” said Richard, holding out his hand, “you always were a good, true, simple-hearted fellow.”
“I hope so, sir,” said Humphrey, giving his horny palm a rub down his cord breeches before taking the extended hand, “and that’s what makes it right that we should go on as we are. Nature knew it, sir, and that’s how it was the change came about—you being the clever one, and best suited for the estate. I’m glad of one thing, though.”
“What’s that?” said Richard, wringing the extended hand.
“Why, I know now, sir, why Mrs Lloyd was always so down on me—she always was down on me, awful—regular hated me, like. Ah, the times I’ve cried over it as a boy! Nobody ever seemed to love me like till now, sir—till now.”
Humphrey beamed as he slapped his broad chest; and his simple words seemed to corroborate those of Mrs Lloyd, till the last ray of hope was crushed from Richard’s breast.
“No, Humphrey,” he said, gravely, though every word cost him a pang, “I cannot stay here as an impostor. The place is yours, I give up all.”
“That you just won’t, sir,” said Humphrey. “Why, I should be a brute beast if I let you. Come, come, let it go for a day or two, and think it over. It won’t trouble me. I don’t want it. I’m only glad of one thing—I’ve got somebody on the hip, and she won’t say no now.”