"Yes, I can eat, and digest your unkindness; but I cannot forget my anxiety. I am considering the welfare of the family. I am looking beyond myself and yourself. You have raised the Cleverdons from being tenant-farmers into being gentlefolks. You have been to the Heralds to grant you a coat of arms and a crest, and, now every one calls you the Squire, who used to call your father a farmer. You have altered Hall into a very handsome mansion, that no gentleman of good degree need be ashamed to live in. I consider all that, brother, and then I think that you are no fool, that you have wonderful wits to have achieved so much, and I am only anxious lest after having achieved so much for the family and the name of Cleverdon, all should go down again, as it did with the Glanvilles--just because there was no heir male." "Have done with your croak--here comes dinner." During the meal old Anthony was very silent. He pulled long and often at the tankard, and neglected the courtesies due to his sister as a guest. She observed that he was uneasy, and was wrapped in thought. What she had said had stuck, and made him uncomfortable. She was too shrewd to revert to the topic during dinner, and when it was over he went out, and left her alone. She knew her brother's ways, his moods, and the turns of his mind, and was convinced that he would come back to her presently and broach anew the subject. She leaned back in the arm-chair, and indulged herself in a nap. The doze lasted about three-quarters of an hour. Whilst she slept her brother was walking about the farm, in great restlessness of mind and body. He was quick-witted enough to see that Magdalen was right. He could not count on matters not falling out as she had said, and then all his labour to build up the Cleverdons would come down like a pack of cards. His son was the main prop of the great superstructure raised by his pride and ambition. If his son, by the dispensation of Providence, were to fail him, he had none to sustain the succession save his daughter Bessie and his cousin Luke, a delicate, narrow-chested lad, who had been an encumbrance thrown on him, had been reared by him, and sent to school by him, and then thrust into sacred Orders as the simplest way of providing for him, and getting him out of the way. Hall to pass to Bessie or to Luke! The idea was most distasteful to him. He returned to the oak parlour, where he had left his sister, and shook her until she roused from her nap. "Sit up--gather your senses! You do not come here to sleep like a frog," said old Anthony with his wonted rudeness. "I beg pardon, brother. I was left alone and had nought to occupy my mind, and dozed for a minute."