With the arrival of the Kitten his subjugation was completed, and a seal was set upon the permanence of his relations with the Manor House. From the days when the Kitten in a white bonnet and woolly gaiters would struggle out of her nurse's arms to be taken by Willets, sitting on his knee and gazing at him with wine-coloured bright eyes not unlike his own, occasionally putting up a small hand encased in an absurd fingerless glove to turn his face that she might see it better, Willets was her infatuated and abject slave. When on these occasions he attempted to restore her to her nurse she would clutch him fiercely and scream, so that it ended in his carrying her up to the house and up the backstairs to the nursery, whence he only escaped by strategy. No day passed without a visit from the Kitten and although he was not wholly blind to the defects in her character, he was sure she was the "peartest, sauciest, cleverest little baggage in the British Isles." Of course the fact that Eloquent had been asked to dine at the Manor House was much canvassed in the village. Miss Gallup trumpeted the matter abroad, and naturally it was discussed exhaustively by what Mr Ffolliot would have called his "retainers." Willets was not sure that he approved. "I've no doubt," he said leniently to Mrs Willets as they were sitting at tea, "that he's a smart young chap and he's got on wonderfully, but I don't altogether trust that pushing kind myself, and he's that sort. Why, I saw him, with my own eyes, walk past this house with our Miss Mary as bold as brass. I'll warrant if Squire had seen him he'd have been put out." "He was her partner at dinner last night," Fusby was saying, "and what's more," here Mrs Willets lowered her voice mysteriously, "he says as he looked at her that loving, he's sure he's after her." "After your grandmother!" Willets said rudely, his hawk's eyes bright with anger. "As if Miss Mary would so much as look at him! Let him seek a mate in his own class." "That's just what he won't do; Miss Gallup--she's that set-up and silly about him--says he must marry a lady, one who'll be able to help him now he's got so high up. I'm surprised, I own it, at Squire--but probably it was the Mistress, she's all for friendliness always. But I'll warrant they'd both be in a pretty takin' if they thought he was after Miss Mary." "I tell you he's nothing of the kind," Willets shouted, thumping the table so violently that he hurt his hand. "It's scandalous to say such things, and so I'll tell Fusby the first time I see him--gossiping old silly." "Now, William, it's no good going on against Fusby. He was as upset as you could be yourself, an' he only told me when he looked in this afternoon because he felt worried like. He wouldn't care a bit if it wasn't that she seems taken with 'im. He says he saw them whisperin' at dinner, and young Gallup he give something to Miss Mary under the table. Fusby _saw_ them."