This attachment to Balder Hall, and the innumerable times that his horse and he were reported to have been seen travelling over the road thither, was the canker which vexed the hearts of the womankind. A good many of the young men began presently to say that Otho was so cross in his temper that the only way to get on with him was to let him alone as much as possible; and, by and by, prudent fathers, however much they might have approved of him as a husband for one of their spotless daughters, began to think it was as well that their sons should not have too much to do with him. Nothing tangible had been alleged against him during those months; nothing actively bad; but, on the other hand, there was nothing good. In any of the staider pursuits of a country gentleman of his standing, politics, county business, public affairs of any kind, he took not the faintest or most elementary interest; nay, he had been known, when occasion offered, to express a rough kind of contempt for them, and for those who troubled themselves with them. Altogether, Otho Askam, who had been a good deal looked forward to as the coming man, created much disappointment now that he had come. The last fact which formed food for gossip and wonderment was, that that gentlemanly, well-bred youth, Gilbert Langstroth, against whom scandal had never raised so much as a whisper, who was known to be good—look at the way in which he devoted himself to his failing father—and was said, by those who knew him, to be as clever as he was good—this paragon amongst sons and young men became the chosen friend and associate of Otho Askam, almost from the day of his arrival in Bradstane. Gossip exhausted itself in trying to find reasons for this alliance; in discovering points of resemblance between two such diverse characters, points which might account for the intimacy which had sprung up between them. Gossip spent her breath in vain. Undisturbed, and unheeding what was said about them, the young men remained and continued to be friends, and friends who were almost inseparable. The neighbourhood presently discovered that to stand perpetually with a gape on one’s mouth is undignified, so it ceased to gape, shrugged its shoulders, and said, ‘Well, if I were Mr. Langstroth, I should not like my son to form such an intimacy.’ The neighbourhood could not possibly have been more surprised than was Gilbert’s brother, Michael, though he kept his surprise to himself, and naturally did not hear very much of that felt by other persons. He had often chaffed Gilbert about his having no friends; acquaintances in plenty, but no chum, as the absent Roger Camm was Michael’s own chum. Gilbert had always replied— ‘Wait a bit. Every one does not suit me for a friend. When I do find one, I’ll stick to him.’ And then Otho Askam came. Gilbert appeared to have found the combination of qualities he wished for in a friend, and his words were fulfilled. He ‘stuck to him.’