"Thank you. I have tried to do so in everything round here. But now as to taking the hounds, I have given no promise, until I knew your opinion. Would it annoy Sir Harold, or any of your family?"
"Not in the least; especially after you have been so kind as to ask us. They have long left our hands, as you know. My grandfather kept them on, long after he could afford it; but my father never cared for them, and gave it up as soon as possible. As for my brother, he would have nothing to do with them, if he were made of money. And my liking matters of course neither way."
"That seems hard when you do all the work. You mean, I suppose, that you would like to keep them under different circumstances."
"If I were head of the family, and could afford it handsomely. As it is, I would not, even if I could afford it. I should seem to be putting myself too forward."
"Exactly so. And shall not I appear to be putting myself too forward, if I bring them back to the old place, just because I can afford it? Your candid opinion about that."
"Then I think not. No one could take it amiss but ourselves; and we are not so small as that."
"Not even the ladies? Sometimes ladies do not see things quite as we do. They might take it into their heads—I mean, they might think, not unreasonably, that I was of the upstart order."
"There is very little fear of that," I said; "in our family the ladies are never difficult to deal with. They have always been consulted, and therefore they are shy about forming their opinions. It is not as if they had no weight, as among the less solid Norman race. They know that what they say is something; and that makes them like to hear our opinions first."
"That state of things is most interesting, as well as rather unusual." Mr. Stoneman spoke with a smile of calm inquiry, entirely free from irony, and evidently wished me to go on. But I did not see how it concerned a stranger; so I left him to his own affairs.
"He seems a very decent sort of fellow. But if he has come to pump me," thought I, "he will find that the water has gone from the sucker." And he saw that he could not pursue that subject.