‘And what are those duties, my dear Rector,’ said Leo, with a laugh; ‘perhaps my ideas are rather muddled by my French habits--to keep up a pack of fox-hounds, and ride wildly across country: and provide a beef roasted whole for Christmas?’ ‘Well, you can never go wrong about the beef at Christmas--but I think we’ll let you off the fox-hounds. If you’ll subscribe to the hunt, that will be enough.’ ‘That is a comfort,’ said the unaccustomed squire, ‘for I am not, I fear, a Nimrod at all.’ To hear the familiar way in which their father talked, laying down the law, but not in the least in his imperative way, filled the girls, and even Mrs. Plowden, with an admiration for the Rector which was not invariable in his own house. He was at once so bold and so genial, so entirely at his ease with this gentleman, who was so much out of their way, and beyond their usual range, that they were at once astonished and proud--proud of their father, who spoke to Leo as if he were no better than any other young man in the place, and astonished that he should be able to do so. But Mrs. Plowden could not longer allow these two to have it all their own way. ‘It is so nice of Mrs. Swinford to give up her favourite place, and to consent to come home, in order that you may live among your own people--for it must be a sacrifice. We can’t say anything in favour of our English climate, I fear. We all get on very well, but then we are used to it--but Mrs. Swinford----’ ‘Oh, your mother is with you, of course,’ the Rector said in no such conciliatory tone. ‘Yes, my mother is with me. But, so far as that goes, Mrs. Plowden, Paris, where we have chiefly lived, is no great improvement, that I know, upon England. It’s very cold, and now and then it’s foggy too: but she likes the society: you know it’s generally supposed to be more easy than in England. Not knowing England, except as a child, I can’t tell; but if you can manage to be more conventional here than people are in France, I shall be surprised. Of course, I should not have come, unless my mother had seen the necessity: for I am all she has, you know, now----’ ‘_Now_,’ said the Rector, with pointed emphasis. At which Leo Swinford showed a little uneasy feeling. ‘For a great many years,’ he said. ‘You know my father died--shortly after we left here.’ ‘I know,’ said the Rector, very gravely. Then he added, in a softened tone, ‘It is a very long time ago.’ ‘Yes,’ said the young man, more cheerfully, ‘so long, that almost my only experience of life is, that of being always with my mother, her companion in everything. We have been a sort of lovers,’ he said, with a laugh; ‘everything in the world to each other.’