When the Peacock rose Jos hesitated. The Squire saw it. “Do you go, girl,” he said. “Be off!” For once she wavered—she feared what might happen between the two. But “Do you hear?” the Squire growled. “Go when you are told.” She went then, but Arthur could not restrain his indignation. “Poor Jos!” he muttered. Unluckily the Squire heard the words, and “Poor Jos!” he repeated, scowling at the offender. “What the devil do you mean, sir? Poor Jos, indeed? Confound your impudence! What do you mean?” Arthur quailed, but he was not lacking in wit. “Only that women like a secret, sir,” he said. “And a woman, shut out, fancies that there is a secret.” “Umph! A devilish lot you know about women!” the old man snarled. “But never mind that. I saw your mother yesterday.” “So she told me, sir.” “Ay! And I dare say you didn’t like what she told you! But I want you to understand, young man, once for all, that you’ve got to choose between Aldersbury and Garth. Do you hear? I’ve done my duty. I kept the living for you, as I promised your father, and whether you take it or not, I expect you to do yours, and to live as the Griffins have lived before you. Who the devil is this man Ovington? Why do you want to mix yourself up with him? Eh? A man whose father touched his hat to me and would no more have thought of sitting at my table than my butler would! There, pass the bottle.” “Would you have no man rise, sir?” Arthur ventured. “Rise?” The Squire glared at him from under his great bushy eyebrows. “It’s not to his rise, it’s to your fall I object, sir. A d—d silly scheme this, and one I won’t have. D’you hear, I won’t have it.” Arthur kept his temper, oppressed by the other’s violence. “Still, you must own, sir, that times are changed,” he said. “Changed? Damnably changed when a Griffin wants to go into trade in Aldersbury.” “But banking is hardly a trade.” “Not a trade? Of course it’s a trade—if usury is a trade! If pawn-broking is a trade! If loan-jobbing is a trade! Of course it’s a trade.” The gibe stung Arthur and he plucked up spirit. “At any rate, it is a lucrative one,” he rejoined. “And I’ve never heard, sir, that you were indifferent to money.” “Oh! Because I’m going to charge your mother rent? Well, isn’t the Cottage mine? Or because fifty years ago I came into a cumbered estate and have pinched and saved and starved to clear it? Saved? I have saved. But I’ve saved out of the land like a gentleman, and like my fathers before me, and not by usury. Not by money-jobbing. And if you expect to benefit—but there, fill your glass, and let’s hear your tongue. What do you say to it?” “As to the living,” Arthur said mildly, “I don’t think you consider, sir, that what was a decent livelihood no longer keeps a gentleman as a gentleman. Times are changed, incomes are changed, men are richer. I see men everywhere making fortunes by what you call trade, sir; making fortunes and buying estates and founding houses.”