“Ay, that it is. You cannot imagine, of course, with all your many ways of frittering time away indoors, what a wearing thing it is to have nothing better than rabbit-shooting, or teaching a dog to drop to shot. But now about Hilary: you must relent--indeed you must, dear Roland. He is living on sixpence a-day, I believe--virtuous fellow, most rare young man! Why, if that dirty Steve Chapman now had been treated as you have served Hilary--note of hand, bill-drawing, post-obits,--and you might even think yourself lucky if there were no big forgery to hush up. Ah, his father may think what he likes; but I look on Hilary as a perfect wonder, a Bayard, a Crichton, a pelican!” “Surely you mean a paragon, Struan? What young can he have to feed from his own breast?” “I meant what I said, as I always do. And how can you know what young he has, when you never even let him come near you? Ah, if I only had such a son!” Here the Rector, who really did complain that he had no son to teach how to shoot, managed to get his eyes a little touched with genial moisture. “This is grievous,” Sir Roland answered; “and a little more than I ever expected, or can have enabled myself to deserve. Now, Struan, will you cease from wailing, if I promise one thing?” “That must depend upon what it is. It will take a good many things, I am afraid, to make me think well of you again.” “To hear such a thing from the head of the parish! Now, Struan, be not vindictive. I ought to have let you get a good day’s shooting, and then your terms would have been easier.” “Well, Roland, you know that we can do nothing. The estates are tied up in such a wonderful way, by some lawyer’s trick or other, through a whim of that blessed old lady--she can’t hear me, can she?--that Hilary has his own sister’s life between him and the inheritance; so far as any of us can make out.” “So that you need not have boasted,” answered Sir Roland, with a quiet smile, “about his being a Bayard, in refraining from post-obits.” “Well, well; you know what I meant quite well. The Jews are not yet banished from England. And there is reason to fear they never will be. There are plenty of them to discount his chance, if he did what many other boys would do.” Sir Roland felt the truth of this. And he feared in his heart that he might be pushing his only son a little too hard, in reliance upon his honour. “Will you come to the point for once?” he asked, with a look of despair and a voice of the same. “This is my offer--to get Hilary a commission in a foot-regiment, pack him off to the war in Spain; and if in three years after that he sticks to that Danish Nausicaa, and I am alive--why, then, he shall have her.” Mr. Hales threw back his head--for he had a large, deep head, and when it wanted to think it would go back--and then he answered warily: