"I don't know--I don't know," said Michael Ross, with a dry chuckle. "I'm afraid there was something more than that at the bottom of it, though he never owned it to me." "Ah, well," said Fullerton; "it's very evident that he won't marry Sage Portlock. Poor girl, it's a sad fall away." "Yes," said Tomlinson, smoothly, "it does seem strange." "Well, for my part," said Warton, "I wonder at Joseph Portlock, though I think it's his missus as is most to blame. I don't believe as young Cyril was much hurt." "Not he," chuckled Smithson. "And there he's been for the past month, lying on the sofa, tended by those two women. I hear the parson's been every day, and they do say, that as soon as he gets better--" "He's better now," said Warton. "Well, then," chuckled Smithson, drawing one leg up under him upon his chair from force of habit; "suppose we say much better--they're to be married." "Well, it caps me," said Warton; "I can't understand what it means." "Money," said Fullerton. "Some people keep up their grand houses and gardeners and grape-vines, and get laying traps baited with pretty girls for young lords and people from London, and after all are not so well off as some who pay their twenty or thirty pound rent and have done with it. Joseph Portlock, I suppose, will leave all his money to those two girls some day, and it will be a nice bit. Pity he didn't keep Miss Rue for the other boy, and then parson would have been happy." "When's Frank going back?" said Smithson, the tailor, for reasons of his own. "I'd know; ask him," said Fullerton. "He's always going over to Lewby, so I hear." "Well," said Warton, the saddler, "all I can say is, that if I was John Berry he shouldn't be always coming over to my house." "'Tain't our business," said Fullerton. "I should say, though, that Sage Portlock'll have a nice bit o' money." "Ah, there's a many things done in this life for the sake of money," said Tomlinson, sententiously. "But it looks bad for a young fellow to be lying about on sofas all day long, coaxed and petted up by women, just because he has got a bit of a crack on the head. Doctor said to me, he said, when I asked him about the cut, he said, laughing all the while, `It isn't as deep as a well, nor as wide as a church door,' he said; `but 'twill serve--'twill serve.'" "What did he mean by that?" said Warton. "I don't know," said Fullerton, sharply. "I think it was some stuff or another that he'd read in a book. You know what a fellow he is for giving you bits out of books. Don't you remember that night at the annual dinner? He said, when they were talking about old Mrs Hagley being a bit of a witch--" "Ah, to be sure," said Smithson; "about the cellar." "Yes," continued Fullerton; "he said, `I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Landlord, go down to the cellar and bring up a bottle of the best French brandy.'"