"I only wish Osborne and Roger had been at home," said Mrs. Hamley,
in her low soft voice. "She may find it dull, being with old people,
like the squire and me, from morning till night. When can she come?
the darling--I am beginning to love her already!"
Mr. Gibson was very glad in his heart that the young men of the house
were out of the way; he did not want his little Molly to be passing
from Scylla to Charybdis; and, as he afterwards scoffed at himself
for thinking, he had got an idea that all young men were wolves in
chase of his one ewe-lamb.
"She knows nothing of the pleasure in store for her," he replied;
"and I'm sure I don't know what feminine preparations she may think
necessary, or how long they may take. You'll remember she is a little
ignoramus, and has had no ... training in etiquette; our ways at
home are rather rough for a girl, I'm afraid. But I know I could not
send her into a kinder atmosphere than this."
When the Squire heard from his wife of Mr. Gibson's proposal, he was
as much pleased as she at the prospect of their youthful visitor;
for he was a man of a hearty hospitality, when his pride did not
interfere with its gratification; and he was delighted to think of
his sick wife's having such an agreeable companion in her hours of
loneliness. After a while he said,--"It's as well the lads are at
Cambridge; we might have been having a love-affair if they had been
at home."
"Well--and if we had?" asked his more romantic wife.
"It wouldn't have done," said the Squire, decidedly. "Osborne
will have had a first-rate education--as good as any man in the
county--he'll have this property, and he's a Hamley of Hamley; not a
family in the shire is as old as we are, or settled on their ground
so well. Osborne may marry where he likes. If Lord Hollingford had a
daughter, Osborne would have been as good a match as she could have
required. It would never do for him to fall in love with Gibson's
daughter--I shouldn't allow it. So it's as well he's out of the way."
"Well! perhaps Osborne had better look higher."
"Perhaps! I say he must." The Squire brought his hand down with a
thump on the table, near him, which made his wife's heart beat hard
for some minutes. "And as for Roger," he continued, unconscious of
the flutter he had put her into, "he'll have to make his own way,
and earn his own bread; and, I'm afraid, he's not getting on very
brilliantly at Cambridge. He mustn't think of falling in love for
these ten years."