The train was only just in sight, a little puff of white vapour indicating its whereabouts, and my fleet-footed brother would reach Overford Station as soon as it would; but I implored him not to go.
"Parks will bring the letters," I said. "He took a trap down to convey the new housemaid and her luggage to the house. He will lose no time."
"But that stupid Frith will keep him waiting, if only to annoy me," said Norman, hastily; for a quick temper was my darling brother's besetting sin. He had fought and struggled against it, and often mourned with bitter penitence over its results; but the enemy was strong still, and the day of complete conquest seemed as yet in the distant future.
I cried to my brother as he was leaving the room, "Norman, do not touch the mail-bag, or you will get into trouble; and think how dreadful it would be for me to feel that I was the cause of it to you. Frith is not like old Joynson."
"He is a conceited fellow, who needs to be taught his place," returned Norman, his face flushing as he spoke. "But no fear of my being tempted to give him a lesson to-day. I shall be too late."
Norman darted across the hall, and, scorning the regular paths, quickly reached a short cut used only by our own family to facilitate our passage to the station when we walked thither. I knew that his impatience was all on my account; but I was not a little troubled about possible results. I hoped he might be late; for I dreaded a collision between him and our new station-master, Edward Frith.
Everybody knows what kind of position is occupied by the great man in an agricultural village—the squire who owns every foot of land for miles, and is literally monarch of all he surveys. He is generally beneficent and patriarchal, and there is a kindly familiarity between him and his people; but his sway was a pretty absolute one in my young days.
Such a position had Norman been early called on to fill, and through Uncle Bernard's generosity he had more talents to account for than those who preceded him, and less of the experience which comes with well-spent years than might have been desired.
Old Joynson, the first station-master at Overford, was a man who believed in the infallibility of the squires of King's Court. Had not his ancestors been tenants on the estate for ages? Did he not owe his post to their influence? And was not the word of him who ruled at the Court as law to the old retainer, in whom something of the ancient feudal spirit survived, despite the reforms and changes of the nineteenth century?
During the last years of Joynson's life, he allowed Norman to take liberties which no one in his position could permit without a gross breach of trust. If my brother were expecting letters of importance, he would seize the mail-bag, break the seal, open it, and select from its contents his own particular share.