"—and now he's taken her off to church!" concluded Mrs. Dennison. "He's smitten, Matthew, he's smitten!"
Matthew stirred uneasily in his chair.
"Well, well, my lass!" he said. "Ye know what young folks are—they like each other's company. What d'ye think I sought your company for? Not to sit and stare at you, as if you were a strange image, I know!"
"Well, it all went on and ended in the proper way," said his wife, sharply. "But how do you know where this'll end?"
"I didn't know that aught had begun," said Matthew.
Mrs. Dennison, who was reading what she called a Sunday book, took off her spectacles and closed the book with a snap.
"Matthew!" she said. "You know that it's always been a settled thing since they were children that William Henry should marry his cousin Polly, your only brother John's one child, so that the property of the two families should be united when the time comes for us old ones to go. And it's got to be carried out, has that arrangement, Matthew, and we can't let no dairymaids, ladies as has come down or not, interfere with it!"
Matthew, who was half asleep, bethought himself vaguely of something that had been said long ago, when Polly was born, or at her christening—when the right time came, she and William Henry, then six years old, were to wed. John, Matthew's younger brother, had gone in for trade, and was now a very well-to-do merchant in Clothford, of which city he had been mayor. Matthew woke up a little, made a rapid calculation, and realized that Polly must now be nineteen years of age.
"Aye, aye, my lass," he said, "but you've got to remember that whatever fathers and mothers says, children don't always agree to. William Henry and Polly mightn't hit it off. Polly'll be a fine young lady now, what with all them French governesses and boarding-schools in London and Paris, and such-like."
"Our William Henry," said Mrs. Dennison, with heat and emphasis, "is good enough for any young woman of his own class. And a man as owns six hundred acres of land is as good as any Clothford worsted merchant, even if he has been mayor! And now you listen to me, Matthew Dennison. I had a letter yesterday from Mrs. John saying that she believed it would do Polly good to go into the country, as she'd been looking a bit poorlyish since she came back from Paris, and asking if we could do with her for a few weeks. So to-morrow morning I shall go over to Clothford and bring her back with me—I've already written to say I should. We haven't seen her for five years—she was a pretty gel then, and must be a beauty by now, and we'll hope that her and William Henry'll come together. And if you take my advice, Matthew, you'll get rid of the dairymaid."