“What on earth's that to do with it?” he cried in a rage. “You women! You've no sense of anything! Romantic, idiotic, immoral— I don't know what you're at. For God's sake don't go putting ideas into his head!”
At this outburst Mrs. Pendyce's face became rigid; only the flicker of her eyelids betrayed how her nerves were quivering. Suddenly she threw her hands up to her ears.
“Horace!” she cried, “do—— Oh, poor John!”
The Squire had stepped hastily and heavily on to his dog's paw. The creature gave a grievous howl. Mr. Pendyce went down on his knees and raised the limb.
“Damn the dog!” he stuttered. “Oh, poor fellow, John!”
And the two long and narrow heads for a moment were close together.
CHAPTER V
RECTOR AND SQUIRE
The efforts of social man, directed from immemorial time towards the stability of things, have culminated in Worsted Skeynes. Beyond commercial competition—for the estate no longer paid for living on it—beyond the power of expansion, set with tradition and sentiment, it was an undoubted jewel, past need of warranty. Cradled within it were all those hereditary institutions of which the country was most proud, and Mr. Pendyce sometimes saw before him the time when, for services to his party, he should call himself Lord Worsted, and after his own death continue sitting in the House of Lords in the person of his son. But there was another feeling in the Squire's heart—the air and the woods and the fields had passed into his blood a love for this, his home and the home of his fathers.