Of course, he had been rash--he saw now that he had been a fool to speculate with the future. But who could have foretold that heir of Lardner's?--no one had ever heard of him in Peasmarsh, and most people were as astonished as Reuben though not so disgusted. Sometimes he had an uneasy feeling that Lardner himself had not thought much about his distant son till a year or two ago. He remembered how the old man had disapproved of the way Rose's settlements were spent, and horrible conjectures would assail him that some earlier will had been revoked, and Rose disinherited because her uncle did not wish to put more money into her husband's pocket. After all, fifty pounds and some furniture was very little to leave his only niece, who had lived with him, and had been married from his house. It was nonsense to plead the excuse that she was comfortably settled and provided for--the old man knew that Backfield had made a desperate plunge and could not recoup himself properly without ready money. He must have drawn up his will in the spirit of malice--Reuben could imagine him grinning away in his grave. "Well, Ben Backfield, I've justabout sold you nicely, haven't I?--next to no capital, tedious heavy expenses, and a wife who döan't know the difference between a shilling and a soverun. You thought you'd done yourself unaccountable well, old feller, I reckon. Now you've found out your mistake. And you can't git even wud me where I am. He! He!" Reuben would imagine the corpse saying all sorts of insulting things to him, and he had horrible nightmares of its gibes and mockery. One night Rose woke in the dubious comfort of the new brass bed--which she had wheedled Reuben into sparing from the auction--to find her husband kneeling on his pillow and pinning some imaginary object against the wall while he shouted--"I've got you, you old grinning ghosty--now we'll see who's sold!" She thought this immensely funny, and retailed it with glee to her female friends who continued to invade the place. The multitude of these increased as time went by, for Rose had the knack of attaching women to herself by easy bonds. She was extremely confidential on intimate subjects, and she was interested in clothes--indeed in that matter she was even practical, and a vast amount of dressmaking was done on the kitchen table, much to the disorganisation of Caro's cooking. Sometimes there would be males too, and Reuben found that he could be jealous on occasion. It annoyed him to see a young counter-jumper from Rye sitting in the parlour with an unmanly tea-cup, and he would glare on such aristocracy as a bank-clerk or embryo civil servant, whose visits Rose considered lent a glamour to Odiam. Like a wise woman she used her husband's jealousy to her own advantage. She soon grew extremely skilful in manipulating it, and by its means wrung a good deal out of him which would not otherwise have been hers.