“Young mistress, d’ye say? What, then, has Mr. Foxwell been married? Is that what he went South for?”
“Oh, God forbid! No, ma’am, ’tis his niece, Miss Foxwell, he’s fetching home. She’s been reared by an aunt on her mother’s side, but now her education is finished, and, according to her grandfather’s will, she comes home to Foxwell Court.”
“Then Foxwell Court was left to her? It seems to me I did hear summat of that estate going to a gran’daughter.”
“’Twas left to master and her together in some way or other—my master being the younger son, d’ye see, and she being the orphan of the elder. They do say master would ’a’ got the most of the property but for the wicked life he led in London,—I’ve heard he was a terrible gay man afore he came to the country to live,—but I wasn’t with him in them days, so can’t speak from my own knowledge.” The youth uttered an unconscious sigh, doubtless of regret at possibilities he had missed.
“Well, from what I’ve heard now and again of goings on at Foxwell Court since your master came to live there,” said the landlady, “he didn’t leave all his gay ways behind him in London; but maybe report is a liar, as the saying is, Master Caleb.”
“Oh, no doubt there’s summat of drinking, when the master can get anybody to his mind to drink with—for, between us, Mrs. Betteridge, he doesn’t run well with the county gentlemen—as how should he, with his town breeding? And I don’t say there isn’t considerable gaming, and frolics with the fair sex; but the place has been bachelor’s hall, d’ye see,—till now the young mistress comes.”
“And now I dare say all those fine doings will have to stop,” said Mrs. Betteridge; “—the frolics with the fair seck, at least.”
“That’ll be a pity,” said a voice behind her, whereupon the landlady, turning indignantly, beheld the stout form and complacent ruddy visage of her husband.
“A pity!” she echoed, in wrath and contempt. “’Tis like you to say it, Betteridge! I hope the young lady will keep Foxwell Court clean of the trollops. You’d be up to the same tricks in your own house if all the maids didn’t scorn you.”
The landlord’s only reply being a placid puff of smoke from his long-stemmed pipe, his helpmate discharged an ejaculation of disgust and waddled away. He took her place as catechist of the serving-man, seating himself on the opposite bench.