His first visit to the Paddocks was the consequence (and this young sinner sometimes twisted the fact into a strange kind of condonation) of a pressing invitation from honest John himself. Partly from former respect and affection for the deceased Squire, and in some degree from a liking which he took to the open cheerful manners of the heir-apparent, John Beacham seized the earliest opportunity of making that young gentleman “free,” as it were, of the house in which his father had been so frequent and honoured a guest. Nor was John’s hospitable parent behindhand in her well-meant endeavours to make Lady Millicent’s first-born understand that he was a welcome guest at Pear-tree House. He was always “pleasant-spoken,” she used to say, “without an ounce of milady’s pride about him.” “Young Mr. Arthur” besides (and that was another important point in his favour) was very far from making himself “common” in the houses, whether large or small, of his lady mother’s tenants. I am afraid, after all, that this old lady was--after the fashion of her class in _her_ day--something of a lord lover. The taste has somewhat left that class of late years, rampant as it still is on the higher rungs of the social ladder; and in Mrs. Beacham it was only preserved, and that feebly, by some of the traditions and associations of the past. She entertained an idea too that the son in whom all her hopes and pride were centred was better looked on, by reason of his acquaintance (professionally) with the titled ones of the land. It may be doubted, indeed, whether this simple-minded body did not, in some vague and unreflecting way, consider John’s friendship, or rather familiarity, with a rich earl of sporting proclivities, and the fact of his being, so to speak, “hand and glove” with the heir of Gillingham, decided proofs, had any been wanting, of her son’s general superiority to his fellow-men.