"I'm sure, papa," interposed Miss Janet Delane, "that it would have a good effect on him to meet us." Mr. Delane smiled at his daughter. "Would you like to know him, Jan?" he asked. "Of course I should! He wouldn't be dull, at all events, like most of the men about here, Tora Smith said the Colonel meant to call." "Colonel Smith is hardly in your father's position, my dear." "Oh, since old Smith had his row with the War Office about that pension, he'll call on anybody who's for upsetting everything. It's enough for him that a man's a Radical." "Tora means to go, too," said Janet. "Poor child! It's a pity she hasn't a mother," said Mrs. Delane. "I think I shall go. We can drop him if he turns out badly." "Very well, my dear, as you think best." "I'll walk over on Sunday. I don't suppose he objects to Sunday calls." "Not on the ground that he wants to go to church, at all events," remarked Mrs. Delane. "Perhaps he goes to chapel, mamma." "Oh, no, my dear, he doesn't do that." Mrs. Delane was determined to be just. "Well, he was the son of a Dissenting minister, mamma. The _Critic_ said so." "I wonder what his father thinks of him," said the Squire, with a slight chuckle, not knowing that death had spared Dale's father all chance of trouble on his son's score. "Mrs. Roberts told me," said Janet, "that her husband had been to see him, and liked him awfully." "I think Roberts had better have waited," the Squire remarked, with a little frown. "In his position he ought to be very careful what he does." "Oh, it will be all right if you call, papa." "It would have been better if he had let me go first." Mr. Delane spoke with some severity. Apart from his position of overlord of Denborough, which, indeed, he could not but feel was precarious in these innovating days, he thought he had special claims to be consulted by the Doctor. He had taken him up; his influence had gained him his appointment at Dirkham and secured him the majority of his more wealthy _clientèle_; his good will had opened to the young unknown man the doors of the Grange, and to his wife the privilege of considerable intimacy with the Grange ladies. It was certainly a little hasty in the Doctor not to wait for a lead from the Grange, before he flung himself into Dale Bannister's arms.