“Better, maybe, for his wife if it was a poorer one,” said Mrs. Tamfrey, who knew something of the world and of human nature. “When a young gurl that’s been used to work marries a man that can keep her without it, ten to one that she gets into mischief. I don’t say, if she gits a family about her, which it’s a’most certain she will,” continued Mrs. Tam, speaking, as was only natural, in the interests of her profession, “that Mrs. John Beacham won’t settle down; but she’s but a giddy thing at present, always laughing--I declare it’s the prettiest thing to hear her, and makes one laugh, too, for company; but if she _don’t_ have a family--and John Beacham’s nearly old enough to be her father--and if the young men get about her, why”--and Mrs. Tam, deeming, probably, that she had said enough to enlighten the feminine mind of her auditor, wound up her prognostications with a very suggestive sigh. “I hope not. It would be a sad thing, indeed, if mischief came of this grand marriage of hers. I _should_ be sorry for John Beacham if it was to,” mumbled the widow Thwaytes, whose mouth was fuller than was altogether becoming of well-salted buttered toast. “I should be sorry as sorry could be for John if trouble was to come upon him that way. Ah well! if the Squire had only lived! Such a gentleman as he was for advising and keeping things straight! There isn’t a day nor yet an hour that the parish doesn’t feel the want of him. If Squire Vavasour had been spared, things would have gone on, as we’ve all on us said a hundred times, in quite another guess sort of fashion. There would have been more living at the Castle then, and a precious sight more money spent in the parish. The Castle then would have been a proper house for young people to live in, and be married out of; and now what is it? As Mrs. Shepherd says--and she ought to know that’s been housekeeper these twenty years at the great house--there’s as much skinflinting there as if milady hadn’t as many pounds as she has thousands. ‘I declare,’ says she to me, which it will be a week to-morrow, the day I was taking tea with her up at the Castle,--‘I declare,’ says she, ‘it’s a sin and a shame how little’s been spent this five years at Gillingham Castle. The Chace itself and the game and all has been let to go to rack and ruin. Next to no labourers employed, no parties given where there used to be a’most open house kep, and such a home made for the young gentlemen as it’s no wonder they should run a little wild when they was let out like.’” “There’ll be a change now, I’m thinking,” suggested Mrs. Tamfrey after a pause; “the young ladies are getting on, you know, and Mr. Arthur coming of age next year will make something of a stir, in course.”