“You need not look crusty, Squire,” proceeded Mr. Black; “what I said is merely my opinion, and you may take it for what it is worth; only I consider it to be a confoundedly bad plan to have two establishments, and so I tell you. I would shut up Berrie Down, and move the whole party, bag and baggage, to town. That is what I should do; but, of course, you can do as you like.”
“Yes; and that is what I intend to do: much obliged, at the same time, for your kind permission.”
“Hoity-toity!” said Mr. Black, taking off his hat, and bowing low as he spoke;—it was in one of the empty rooms of Arthur’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields that this conversation occurred,—“hoity-toity! your most obedient, sir, and humbly beg pardon for the liberty.”
In a pet, Arthur turned away, and walking to one of the windows, looked out over the Square, while Mr. Black regarded him with a smile, in which there lurked not merely amusement, but also triumph and contempt.
“You’re a nice chicken, you are,” thus ran the promoter’s secret thought; “and you have a sweet temper, Mister Squire Dudley; and you think you are able to manage your affairs, though anybody, willing to take the trouble, might put a ring through your nose, and lead you from here to Jericho. And so you intend to do as you like! It will be as I like before we have done with one another, I fancy; a conceited, upsetting ass!”
But Mr. Black was much too wise a man to allow even a word of all this to pass his lips. He had his game still to play; and he would not mar the chances of success by any irritated or indiscreet remark.
“Come, Dudley,” he said, “we are not going to quarrel over trifles, are we? I meant no offence, and am sorry if you have taken any. I have knocked about the world too much to be as mealy-mouthed as most of your acquaintances, but I should be as sorry to vex you, perhaps, as any of them. I am glad you like the papers I have chosen; you will find everything in apple-pie order when you bring up Mrs. Dudley and the children. So your wife is going to try moving Miss Lally? I am glad of it; I believe she will get well in half the time in town.”
That was what Heather trusted also; she hoped that some of the great doctors in London would be able to do more for her little girl in a month than the general practitioner at Fifield had effected in five. Every one told her she was doing the wisest thing possible in taking Lally to town! every one was so kind and good!
Mrs. Poole Seymour sent her carriage to convey mother and child to the station, and Mr. Plimpton was at Palinsbridge, ready to conduct Lally across the bridge, and deposit her safely in the compartment he had secured for the travellers.
Miss Baldwin promised to call upon the girls “very often,” and said she should not “forget to find her way to Lincoln’s Inn when in town;” while Mrs. Raidsford came lumbering over in the great family chariot, and, not to be outdone in neighbourly thoughtfulness and delicate consideration, brought Heather a basket of the worst grapes growing in the Moorlands conservatory, and offered to lend her “one of the footmen,” if he could be of any service in seeing to her luggage.