"Humph! Honest tradesmen are not as plentiful as blackberries, though," observed Mr. Weatherhead, reflectively. Mrs. Dobbs ignored this parenthesis, and went on: "It was a bad day for me and mine when he first came swaggering into this house." From which speech it will be seen that the Dobbs side of the family coincided with the Cheffingtons in considering Augustus's to have been an unfortunate marriage; only each party arrived at the same conclusion by a different road. "Have you heard from him lately, Sarah?" asked Mr. Weatherhead, after a pause. "From my precious son-in-law? Not I!" "Oh!" "Not a word from him till he wants something. You may take your oath of that, Jo Weatherhead." "Oh, I thought you might have heard from him, because----" "Well?" (very sharply). "Well, because I see something has been putting old times into your head; and I thought it might be that." "Something been putting old times into my head? I should like to know when they're out of my head! Much you know about it!" Mr. Weatherhead apparently did know something about it; for after another long silence, during which he puffed at his pipe and stared into the fire, Mrs. Dobbs justified his penetration by saying-- "The truth is, I _have_ been turning things over in my mind a good deal since yesterday." Mr. Weatherhead was too wary to expose himself to another snub, so he merely nodded two or three times in an oracular manner. "I'm worried out of my mind about that child. She went off yesterday as bright and happy as possible, and looking so pretty and genteel--fit for any company in the land." "Ah! She went off, you say, to----?" "To the Hadlows'. She is to stay there over Sunday." "Oh! But I don't quite see----" "Go on! What is it that you don't quite see?" "I don't quite see what there is to worry you in that. The Hadlows are very good sort of people." "I should think they _were_ very good sort of people! Canon Hadlow is one of the best men in Oldchester; or in all England, for the matter of that. And he's a gentleman to the marrow of his bones. But what sort of a position has my grand-daughter among the Hadlows and their belongings?" "A very nice position, I should say." "A very nice position!" exclaimed Mrs. Dobbs, who seemed determined to repeat all poor Mr. Weatherhead's speeches in a tone of disdainful irony. "That's so like you, Jo! _She_ thinks it a very nice position, too, poor lamb. She knows nothing of the world, bless her innocent heart. And, for all her seventeen years, she is the merest child in some things. But you might know better. You are not seventeen years old, Jo Weatherhead." "Certainly not," assented he emphatically.