“And look ye here. There must be no more walks in the shrubbery, no more gallivanting together among the woods. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly, sir. Your words could not be plainer.”
“I mean them to be plain. There seems to be no harm done so far, but it’s time this nonsense was put a stop to. Miss Culpepper must marry in a very different sphere from yours.”
“Pardon the remark, sir, but you were quite willing to take Mr. Edward Cope as your son-in-law. Now, I consider myself quite as good a man as Mr. Cope—quite as eligible a suitor for your daughter’s hand.”
“Then I don’t. Besides, young Cope would never have had the chance of getting her if he hadn’t been the son of my oldest friend; the son of the man to whose bravery I owe my life itself. Master Edward owes it to his father and not to himself that I ever sanctioned his engagement to Miss Culpepper.”
“I am indebted for this good turn to Mrs. McDermott,” said Tom to himself, as he walked homeward through the park. “It will only have the effect of bringing matters to a climax a little earlier than I intended, but it will not alter my plans in the least.”
“Fanny has been exaggerating as usual,” was the Squire’s comment. “There was something in it, no doubt, and it’s just as well to have crushed it in the bud; but I think it’s hardly worth while to say anything to Jenny about it.”
A week later, the Squire happened to be riding on his white pony along the high road that fringed one side of Knockley Holt, when, to his intense astonishment, he heard the regular monotonous puffing and saw the smoke of a steam engine that was apparently hard at work behind a clump of larches in the distance. Riding up to the spot, he found some score or so of men all busily engaged. They were excavating a hole in the hill-side, filling-in stout timber supports as they got deeper down; the engine on the top being employed to hoist up the earth in big bucketfuls as fast as it was dug out.
“What’s all this about?” inquired the Squire of one of the men; “and who’s gaffer here?”
“Mr. Bristow, he be the gaffer, sur, and this hole be dug by his orders.”