“My niece!” Mr. Prescott said, and his countenance cleared a little, for he had thought at first that it must be one of the princesses of his house that this man was wooing. “Mary! why, Mary is not old enough for this sort of thing. How old is she? Why, she is only a child!” “You have got used to considering her a child, Mr. Prescott; but I believe she is one-and-twenty, if you will inquire.” Mr. Prescott made a calculation within himself, and after a moment said, “So she is: I believe she is in her two-and-twentieth year. Who would have thought it! You must know,” he added, “Mr. Asquith--though I don’t know what your ideas may be on that subject--that though Mary is my niece, she has no money, not a penny. My sister was sadly imprudent in her marriage. Her orphan child, of course, had a home with me, but there is nothing in the way of fortune, not a sou.” “So I understood,” said the curate, “otherwise I should never have ventured to approach her, being myself so poor a man.” “Ah!” said the Squire, looking at him doubtfully; then he added with cheerfulness, “You are still on the first step, Mr. Asquith, there is no telling how far you may go.” “I am not the stuff of which bishops are made,” said the curate, with a short laugh. “Well, there is no telling,” said the other; and then he entered upon business. “You will understand,” he said, “that I must make certain inquiries before going any farther. In the matter of family now. We are not rich people, but in that respect we Prescotts have certain pretensions----” “In that respect it is very easy to answer you, Mr. Prescott. So far as old family goes, mine is old enough. We have been in Cumberland in direct descent, father and son, settled in the same place, for three hundred years. But----” Mr. Prescott had been nodding his head in approval, saying to himself that he knew Asquith was a good name in the North. He looked up, but only with the faintest shadow on his face, at the curate’s “but.” “But,” repeated Mr. Asquith firmly, “though we are an old-established race, we are not what you would call gentry, Mr. Prescott. My father is of the old class of statesmen in Cumberland----” “What is that?” asked the Squire hastily. “It is, I suppose, what you call yeomen in the South.” “Oh!” said Mr. Prescott. He recovered from this shock, however, in shorter time than might have been expected; for a substantial yeoman is a very respectable personage, and there are often nice little hoards of money behind them; and then it was only Mary, after all.