There was one thing that he could do, and one only, that had about it any real basis of satisfaction. He could sell that piece of ground which has already been spoken of as not forming part of the entailed estate—the piece of ground on which his new mansion was to have been built. Land, just now, was fetching good prices. Yes, he would certainly sell Knockley Holt, and fund in Jenny’s name whatever money it might fetch—not that it would command a very high price, being a poor piece of land, as everybody knew. Still it would be a nest egg, though only a little one, for a rainy day.
CHAPTER IV.
KNOCKLEY HOLT.
About this time Tom Bristow found himself very often at Pincote. The Squire would have him there. It seemed as if he could not do without Tom’s society. Since the loss of his money he had been getting more and more disinclined either for going out himself or having company at home. Still he could not altogether do without somebody to talk to now and then; and Tom being either a good listener or a lively talker, as occasion might require, and having already rendered the Squire an important service, it seemed somehow to fall into the natural order of things that he should be invited three or four times a week to dine at Pincote. Nor after Mrs. McDermott’s arrival was he there less frequently. Not that the Squire did not find his sister very lively company. In fact, he often found her too lively. She had too much to say: her tongue was never quiet. In season and out of season, she overwhelmed her brother with an unending flow of small-talk and petty gossip about things that had little or no interest for him; but about which he was obliged to feign an interest, unless, as he himself expressed it, “he wanted to know the length of his sister’s tongue.”
But when Tom was there the case was different. He acted as a sort of buffer between Mrs. McDermott and the Squire. By means of a few adroit questions, and a clever assumption of ignorance with regard to whatever topic Mrs. McDermott might be dilating on, he generally succeeded in drawing the full torrent of her conversation on his own devoted head, thereby affording the Squire a breathing space for which he was truly grateful. Sometimes, but not very often, Tom let the demon of mischief get the mastery of him. On such occasions he would lead Mrs. McDermott on by one artful question after another till she began to contradict herself and eat her own words, and ended by floundering helplessly in a sort of mental quagmire, and so relapsing into sulky silence, with a dim sense upon her that she had somehow been coaxed into making an exhibition of herself by that demure-looking young scamp of a Bristow, who seemed hand and glove with both her brother and her niece after a fashion that she neither liked nor understood.
Yet was the love of hearing herself talk so ingrained in Mrs. McDermott’s nature, that by the time of Tom’s next visit to Pincote she was ready to fall into the same trap again, had he been inclined to lead her on.
“Who is that young Bristow that you and Jane make such a pet of?” she asked her brother one day. “I don’t seem to recollect any family of that name hereabouts.”
“Pet, indeed! Nobody makes a pet of him, as you call it,” growled the Squire. “He’s the son of the doctor who attended poor Charlotte in her last illness. He’s a sharp young fellow who has got his head screwed on the right way, and he’s been useful to me in one or two business matters, and may be so again; so there’s no harm in asking him to dinner now and then.”
“Now and then with you seems to mean three or four times a week,” sneered Mrs. McDermott.
“And what if it does?” retorted the Squire. “As long as I can call the house my own, I’ll ask anybody I like to dinner, and as often as I like.”
“Only if I were you, I wouldn’t forget that I’d a daughter who was just at a marriageable age.”