“Because I meant just what I said.”
“And the friend, then?”
“I have told you several times that this young Winburn is the man.”
“What, your friend?”
“Yes, my friend,” said; Tom; and he felt himself getting red at having to call Harry his friend in such company. Mr. Wurley looked at him for a few moments, and then took his leg off the billiard table, and came round to Tom with the sort of patronizing air with which he had lectured him on billiards.
“I say, Brown, I'll give you a piece of advice,” he said. “You're a young fellow, and haven't seen anything of the world. Oxford's all very well, but it isn't the world. Now I tell you, a young fellow can't do himself greater harm than getting into low company and talking as you have been talking. It might ruin you in the county. That sort of radical stuff won't do, you know, calling a farm laborer your friend.”
Tom chafed at this advice from a man who, he well knew, was notoriously in the habit of entertaining at his house, and living familiarly with, betting men and trainers, and all the riff-raff of the turf. But he restrained himself by a considerable effort, and, instead of retorting, as he felt inclined to do, said, with an attempt to laugh it off, “Thank you, I don't think there's much fear of me turning radical. But will you let me the cottage?”
“My agent manages all that. We talked about pulling it down. The cottage is in my preserves, and I don't mean to have some poaching fellow there to be sneaking out at night after my pheasants.”
“But his grandfather and great-grandfather lived there.”
“I dare say, but it's my cottage.”