The Squire was a man who, all his life, had preferred men’s company to that of the opposite sex. His tastes were not at all æsthetic. He liked to talk about cattle, and crops, and the state of the markets; to talk a little about imperial politics—chiefly confined to blackguarding “the other side of the House”—and a great deal about local politics. He had been in the habit of talking by the hour together about paving, and lighting, and sewage, and the state of the highways: all useful matters without a doubt, but hardly topics calculated to interest a lady. Though he liked to have Jane play to him now and then—but never for more than ten minutes at any one time—he always designated it as “tinkling;” and as often as not, when he asked her to sing, he would say, “Now, Jenny, lass, give us a squall.” But for all this, in former times Jane and he had got on very well together on the occasions when they had been without company at Pincote. He was moving about a good deal in the world at that time, mixing with various people, talking to and being talked to by different friends and acquaintances, and was at no loss for subjects to talk about, even though those subjects might not be particularly interesting to his daughter. But Jane made a capital listener, and could always give him a good commonplace answer, and that was all he craved—that and three-fourths of the talk to himself. Of late, however, as we have already seen, the Squire had all but given up going into society, by which means he at once dried up the source from which he had been in the habit of obtaining his conversational ideas. When he came to dine alone with Jane he found himself with nothing to talk about. Under such circumstances there was nothing left for him but grumbling. But even grumbling becomes tiresome after a time, especially when the person to whom such complainings are addressed never takes the trouble to contradict you, and is incapable of being grumbled at herself. It was after one of these tedious evenings that the Squire said to Jane, “We may as well have Bristow up to-morrow, I think. I want to see him about one or two things, and he may as well stop for dinner. So you had better drop him a line.” The Squire had nothing of any importance to see Tom about, but he was too stubborn to own, even to himself, that it was the young man’s lively company that he was secretly longing for. The weather next morning happened to be very bad, and Jane smiled demurely to herself as she noted how anxious her father was lest the rain should keep Tom from coming. Jane knew that neither rain nor anything else would keep him away. “Papa is almost as anxious to see him as I am,” she said to herself. “He thought that he could live without him: he now begins to find out his mistake.”