“But what, child?” cried the mother, for Charlotte had come to a standstill.
“I—I am afraid that parents and children see with different eyes—just as though things were for each a totally opposite aspect,” she went on timidly. “The difficulty is how to reconcile that view and this.”
“And do you know what my father used to say to me in my young days?” put in the Squire. “‘Young folks think old folks fools, but old folks know the young ones to be so.’ There was never a truer saying than that, Miss Charlotte.”
Miss Charlotte only sighed in answer. The wind, high that day, was taking her muslin petticoats, and she had some trouble to keep them down. Mrs. Tinkle got over the stile, and the Squire turned back towards home.
A fortnight or so had passed by after this, when Church Dykely woke one morning to an electric shock; Nash Caromel and Charlotte had gone and got married. They did it without the consent of (as the Squire had put it) pastors and masters. Nash had none to consult, for he could not be expected to yield obedience to his brother; and Charlotte had asked Mrs. Tinkle, and Mrs. Tinkle had refused to countenance the ceremony, though she did not actually walk into the church to forbid it.
Taking a three weeks’ trip by way of honeymoon, the bride and bridegroom came back to Church Dykely. Caromel’s Farm refused to take them in; and Miles Caromel, indignant to a degree, told his brother that “as he had made his bed, so must he lie upon it,” which is a very convenient reproach, and often used.
“Nash is worse than a child,” grumbled Miles to the Squire, his tones harder than usual, and his manner colder. “He has gone and married this young woman—who is not his equal—and now he has no home to give her. Did he suppose that we should receive him back here?—and take her in as well? He has acted like an idiot.”
“Mrs. Tinkle will not have anything to do with them, I hear,” returned the Squire: “and Tinkle, of Inkberrow, is furious.”
“Tinkle of Inkberrow’s no fool. Being a man of substance, he thinks they may be falling back upon him.”
Which was the precise fear that lay upon Miles himself. Meanwhile Nash engaged sumptuous lodgings (if such a word could be justly applied to any rooms at Church Dykely), and drove his wife out daily in the pony-gig that was always looked upon as his at Caromel’s Farm.