“He’s an ass,” growled the Major. “What’s he got to do burdening himself with other people’s children. Why, there’s five of ’em, sir! They’ll hate him like poison—they’ll think he’s in no end of conspiracies to shut them out of their fortune. By Jove! if he knew as much about other people’s children as I do. I’ve had two families consigned to me from India—as if I were a reformatory, or a schoolmaster, by Jove! _She’s_ all very well, as women go; but I wouldn’t marry that family—no, not for _twenty_-five thousand a-year.” “I confess I think it’s a pity,” said Mr Spencer, playing with the Fontanel grapes. The Curate perhaps was thinking in his heart that such delicate little souvenirs might have gone quite as appropriately to his own little _ménage_ as to the Rector’s, who lacked for nothing. “It’s like going into life at second hand, you know. I shouldn’t like it, for my part. The children are a drawback, to be sure; but that’s not the greatest, to my mind; they are nice enough children.” “Delightful children!” cried the Doctor, “little bricks! plucky little things! I don’t care for babies, though they’re partly my business. A family ready made would just suit me.” “Well, it ain’t much in my line to say what a fellow ought or oughtn’t to do,” said young Chesterfield. “I’m not a marrying man myself. I don’t pretend to understand that sort of thing, you know. But Summerhayes ain’t a spoon, as everybody will allow. He knows what he’s doing. Last time I was at Fontanel, I couldn’t make out for the life of me what Mrs Clifford wanted with that new set of stables. She said they were preparing against Charley’s growing up. I thought somehow Summerhayes must have a hand in it, and it’s plain enough now.” “Well, he has done a great deal for her,” said the Rector; “he’s been a sort of unpaid steward at Fontanel. I daresay she didn’t know how to reward him otherwise. I believe that’s the handiest way of making it up to a man in a lady’s fancy. It’s a dangerous kind of business to go on long; but I don’t know that there’s anything to find fault with. She’s pretty and he’s not young;—well, not exactly a young fellow, I mean,” said the Rector, with a half apology. “I daresay they’ll do very well together. If poor Clifford had only made a sensible will—but for that nobody would have had any right to talk.” “And what was poor Clifford’s will?” asked the stranger, with a polite yawn; “men don’t generally study their wife’s convenience in a second marriage, in that document; has the defunct been harder upon this lively lady than most husbands, or what’s wrong about his will?”