"He's never looked so bright since he came," said Mr. Eames to his wife when Geoff had left the room. "He's about getting tired of it, I fancy; and the squire's only too ready to forgive and forget, I take it. But he's a deal o' good stuff in him, has the boy, and so I told the squire. He's a fine spirit of his own, too."
"And as civil a lad as ever I seed," added Mrs. Eames. "No nonsense and no airs. One can tell as he's a real gentleman. All the same, I'll be uncommon glad when he's with his own folk again; no one'd believe the weight it's been on my mind to see as he didn't fall ill with us. And you always a-telling me as squire said he wasn't to be coddled and cosseted. Yet you'd have been none so pleased if he'd got a chill and the rheumatics or worse, as might have been if I hadn't myself seen to his bed and his sheets and his blankets, till the weight of them on my mind's been almost more nor I could bear."
"Well, well," said the farmer, soothingly, "all's well as ends well. And you said yourself it'd never 'a' done for us to refuse the squire any mortal service he could have asked of us."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE NEW SQUIRE AND HIS FAMILY.
uesday brought no letter for Geoff—nor Wednesday, nor even Thursday. His spirits went down again, and he felt bitterly disappointed. Could his friend, the guard, have forgotten to post the letter, after all? he asked himself. This thought kept him up till Thursday evening, when, happening to see the same man at the station, the guard's first words were, "Got any answer to your love-letter yet, eh, Jim? I posted it straight away," and then Geoff did not know what to think.