'You must admit, Alice, that he seems a bit gone on her,' said May, with a direct determination to annoy her mother.
'May, dear, you shouldn't talk in that slangy way; you never used to; you have picked it up from Mr. Scully. Do you know Mr. Scully, Alice? Violet's brother.'
'Yes, I met him the night we dined at Lord Dungory's.'
'Oh, of course you did. Well, I admit I don't like him; but May does. They go out training horses together. I don't mind that; but I wish she wouldn't imitate his way of talking. He has been a very wild young man.'
'Now, mother dear, I wish you would leave off abusing Fred. I have repeatedly told you that I don't like it.'
The acerbity of this remark was softened by May's manner, and, throwing her arms on her mother's shoulders, she commenced to coax and cajole her.
The Goulds were of an excellent county family. They had for certainly three generations lived in comfortable idleness, watching from their big square house the different collections of hamlets toiling and moiling, and paying their rents every gale day. It was said that some ancestor, whose portrait still existed, had gone to India and come back with the money that had purchased the greater part of the property. But, be this as it may, in Galway three generations of landlordism are considered sufficient repentance for shopkeeping in Gort, not to speak of Calcutta. Since then the family history had been stainless. Father and son had in turn put their horses out to grass in April, had begun to train them again in August, had boasted at the Dublin horse-show of having been out cub-hunting, had ridden and drunk hard from the age of twenty to seventy. But, by dying at fifty-five, the late squire had deviated slightly from the regular line, and the son and heir being only twelve, a pause had come in the hereditary life of the Goulds. In the interim, however, May had apparently resolved to keep up the traditions so far as her sex was supposed to allow her.
They lived in one of those box-like mansions, so many of which were built in Ireland under the Georges. On either side trees had been planted, and they stretched to the right and left like the wings of a theatre. In front there was a green lawn; at the back a sloppy stableyard. The latter was May's especial delight, and when Mr. Scully was with them, it seemed impossible to induce her to leave it. He frequently rode over to Beechgrove, and towards the end of the afternoon it became easy to persuade him to stay to dinner. And, as the night darkened and the rain began to fall, the inhospitality of turning him out was insisted on by May, and Mrs. Gould sent up word that a room was to be prepared for him. Next morning he sent home for a change of things, and thus it was not infrequent for him to protract his visit to the extent of three or four days.
His great friend, Mrs. Manly—a lady who had jumped five feet, four months before the birth of her sixth child—had said that his was a 'wasted life,' and the phrase, summing up what most people thought of him, gained currency, and was now generally used whenever his conduct was criticized or impeached. After having been in London, where he spent some years in certain vague employments, and having contracted as much debt as his creditors would permit, and more than his father would pay, he had gone through the Bankruptcy Court, and returned home to drag through life wearily, through days and weeks so appallingly idle, that he often feared to get out of bed in the morning. At first his father had tried to make use of him in his agency business, and it was principally owing to Mr. Fred's bullying and insolent manners that Mr. Scully was now unable to leave his house unless accompanied by police.
Fred was about thirty years of age. His legs were long, his hands were bony, and 'stableyard' was written in capital letters on his face. He carried a Sportsman under his arm, a penny and a half-crown jingled in his pocket; and as he walked he lashed the trousers and boot, whose elegance was an echo of the old Regent Street days, with an ash-plant.