"Glad to see you, Jim! Little Jim you were; but, by Jove! I should not like to carry you on my back now, as I have done many a time. Very glad to see you! Old times come again, by George! Trace every feature of your face, and can almost see Magdalen tower behind your back--you're so like your father. How's the Vicar, eh? I'll drag him out of that infernal spinning-jenny place yet, and give him a breather across the home-copse at Havering before next season's over." Prescott said that his father was well and jolly, but scarcely up to shooting now, he had had so little practice lately. "So much the more reason we should give it him, then! He used to be a crack shot; one of the few men I've seen shoot a brace of woodcock right and left! And walk! by George, he'd walk me into--has he had any gout?" "Not yet, sir;--a threatening last year." "Bravo!" roared the old gentleman; "I've got some 20-port that shall bring that threatening to real effect, if he'll only drink enough of it. And to think that Pussy should have found you out!" "Pussy?" said Mr. Prescott. "Emily, of course! a wayward gentle puss who never shows her claws!" and at that moment Emily entered the room, and advanced towards Prescott with frank smile and outstretched hand. Luncheon passed off pleasantly enough. The old gentleman rattled on incessantly, and availed himself of Prescott's presence, and Mrs. Wilmslow's distracted attention consequent thereupon, to take three bumpers of dry sherry, instead of that one half-glass to which, by doctor's orders, he was so strictly relegated. Mrs. Wilmslow was thoroughly charmed with Prescott, led him on to talk of his home-life, of his office friends, and seemed to regard him with real interest. Emily was less talkative than she had been the previous evening, and seldom looked up from the table; but she joined readily in the conversation, and none were too pleased when the horses were announced. "Got a horse, Jim?" asked the Squire. "That's right! hope it'll carry you all right, though one never knows any thing about these hired hacks. You might have ridden the cob, if I'd known you'd been coming earlier! This is his third day's rest, and the cob will be about as fresh as paint when I get across him again. Not that I care much for your Rotten-Row riding--dull work that, up and down, up and down! The Vicar and I--we used to go to work in a little more business-like fashion than that! I suppose he never gets a day's run now? Ah! thought not! Those spinning-jenny locals would think it unprofessional for a parson to follow hounds, eh? There, bless you, pussy! good-by, child! and good-by to you, young Jim! Call here again in a day or two, and we'll settle about your coming to Havering in the vacation--and the Vicar too, d'ye hear?"