“Indeed? It might perhaps disappoint you—a tumble-down old house, an embarrassed estate. My brother will get but a small income when it falls to him. My father fights cocks and dogs, rides to hounds, and, I grieve to say, drinks hard, like all our Welsh squires.”
I was surprised at Ms frank statement. My mother watched him curiously, with those attentive blue eyes, as my father returned;
“Of a certainty, thou dost not add to my inducements to visit Wyncote. I should, I fear, be sadly out of place.”
“I am afraid that is but too true, unless your head is better than mine. We are a sad set, we Wynnes. All the prosperity, and I fear much of the decency of the family, crossed the ocean long ago.”
“Yet I should like to see Wyneote,” said I. “I think thou didst tell me it is not thy home.”
“No; a soldier can hardly be said to have a home; and a younger brother, with a tough father alive, and an elder brother on an impoverished estate, must needs be a wanderer.”
“But we shall make thee welcome here,” said my father, with grave kindness. “We are plain people, and live simply; but a Wynne should always find, as we used to say here, the latch-string outside.”
With a little more talk of the Wynnes, the captain, declining to remain longer, rose, and, turning to me, said, “I hear, Cousin Hugh, that you refused to say that you were sorry for the sharp lesson you gave me the other night. I have made my peace with your mother.”
“I shall see that my son behaves himself in future. Thou hast heard thy cousin, Hugh?”
I had, and I meant to make it up with him, but my father’s effort as a peacemaker did not render my course the more easy. Still, with the mother-eyes on me, I kept my temper.