“It is ten minutes past nine,” exclaimed Mr Atheling, solemnly rising from the table. “I have not been so late for years--see what your nonsense has brought me to. Now, Mary, think it over reasonably, and I will hear all that you have to say to-night.” So Mr Atheling hastened to his desk to turn over this all-important matter as he walked and as he laboured. The Old Wood Lodge obliterated to the good man’s vision the very folios of his daily companionship--old feelings, old incidents, old resentment and pugnacity, awoke again in his kindly but not altogether patient and self-commanded breast. The delight of being able to leave something--a certain patrimonial inheritance--to his son after him, gradually took possession of his mind and fancy; and the pleasant dignity of a house in the country--the happy power of sending off his wife and his children to the sweet air of his native place--won upon him gradually before he was aware. By slow degrees Mr Atheling brought himself to believe that it would be dishonourable to give up this relic of the family belongings, and make void the will of the dead. The Old Wood Lodge brightened before him into a very bower for his fair girls. The last poor remnant of his yeoman grandfather’s little farm became a hereditary and romantic nucleus, which some other Atheling might yet make into a great estate. “There is Charlie--he will not always be a lawyer’s clerk, that boy!” said his father to himself, with involuntary pride; and then he muttered under his breath, “and to give it up to _him_!” Under this formidable conspiracy of emotions, the excellent Mr Atheling had no chance: old dislike, pungent and prevailing, though no one knew exactly its object or its cause, and present pride and tenderness still more strong and earnest, moved him beyond his power of resistance. There was no occasion for the attack, scientifically planned, which was to have been made upon him in the evening. If they had been meditating at home all day upon this delightful bit of romance in their own family history, and going over, with joy and enthusiasm, every room and closet in Miss Bridget’s old house, Papa had been no less busy at the office. The uncertain tenor of a lawsuit had no longer any place in the good man’s memory, and the equivocal advantage of the ruinous old house oppressed him no longer. He began to think, by an amiable and agreeable sophistry, self-delusive, that it was his sacred duty to carry out the wishes of the dead. CHAPTER XXI. A LAW STUDENT.