Mrs. Bullivant raised the hand that was holding hers to her lips and kissed it. "Dear Mr. Cortelyon," she said, and for once her voice had, or seemed to have, a tremor in it, "although you forbid me to thank you for your act of noble generosity to me and my son, you cannot, at any rate, hinder me from remembering you in my prayers."
"His mother now produced the
Squire's watch and appendages."
A cynical smile lighted up the Squire's haggard face. Perhaps the picture of Mrs. Bullivant on her knees, returning thanks for a thumping legacy--for that was the form her remembrance of him would take, if it took any--struck him as being a trifle incongruous.
Next moment an exclamation escaped him. He had suddenly missed his big gold watch, with its pendant of seals and trinkets, which he was in the habit of keeping within reach on the little table by his bedside. That it had been there only a few minutes before he was fully convinced. Whither, then, had it vanished?
Mrs. Bullivant at once began a search for the missing article, but at the end of two or three minutes she gave it up as a bad job. Then her eyes fell on Gavin, who had gone back to his perch on the easy-chair, and had been watching her movements with much apparent interest. She knew from previous experience that when he looked the most cherubic he was usually most in fault. It seemed to her that he appeared too unconscious to be wholly innocent. "Come here," she said, beckoning him with her finger. He obeyed without hesitation.
He had only lately been breeched, and very proud he was at having been emancipated from petticoats. Pockets had not been omitted from his jean trousers--cut short in the leg, as was the fashion, so as to leave displayed an amplitude of white stocking--and from one of them his mother now produced the Squire's watch and appendages. He flushed a little and threw a timorous glance at the sick man, but, on the whole, his mother was the more put about of the two.
"I cannot imagine what made him do such a thing," she said, with tears of vexation in her eyes. "But you may rest assured, dear Mr. Cortelyon, that I will not fail to chastise him most severely when we reach home."
But the Squire was sniggering. "I trust, Onoria, you will do no such thing," he said. "It was merely the trick of a child too young to know the difference between meum and tuum. The best course will be to overlook it as if it were a matter of no consequence and so leave him to forget it. Indeed, I am rather glad than otherwise to have had such a proof of the young rascal's acquisitive faculty. It goes, I think, to prove that he will not grow up a prodigal like his father."
When his visitors had left him the Squire lay for some time deep in thought. At length he said, speaking aloud, for he had just taken his cordial and was alone: "The more I see of her, the more confirmed I am in my decision. Her views in all that relates to the great question of property are almost the counterpart of my own. She is a woman of a thousand. What an admirable daughter-in-law she would have made! If only that poor headstrong lad of mine had---- But why go back to that business even in thought? The past is dead and buried; we have now to deal with the present and to arrange for the future. I would give something to be able to see Onoria's face while she is hearing the will read. I told her about the legacy of three thousand pounds, but I said nothing about a life-interest in my landed estate. I have left that by way of a surprise, and what a joyful surprise it will be to her! Well, well, to-morrow I will send for Piljoy."