Verty raises his head and smiles.

“I am very fond of Mr. Roundjacket,” he says.

“Fond of him?”

“Yes, sir:  he likes me too, I think,” Verty says.

“How does he show it, my boy?”

“He gives me advice, sir.”

“What! and you like him for that?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Well, perhaps the nature of the advice may modify my surprise at your gratitude, Verty.”

“Anan, sir?”

“What advice does he give you?”

Verty laughs.

“Must I tell, sir?  I don’t know if—­”

And Verty blushes slightly, looking at Miss Lavinia and Redbud.

“Come, speak out!” laughs the Squire.  “He advises you—­”

“Not to get married.”

And Verty blushes.

We need not say that the wicked old Squire greets this reply of Verty with a laugh sufficient to shake the windows.

“Not to get married!” he cries.

“Yes, sir,” Verty replies, blushing ingenuously.

“And you like Mr. Roundjacket, you say, because he advises you not to get—­”

“No, oh! no, sir!” interrupts Verty, with sudden energy, “oh! no, sir, I did not mean that!”

And the young man, embarrassed by his own vehemence, and the eyes directed toward his face, hangs his head and blushes.  Yes, the bold, simple, honest Verty, blushes, and looks ashamed, and feels as if he is guilty of some dreadful crime.  Do. not the best of us, under the same circumstances?—­that is to say, if we have the good fortune to be young and innocent.

The Squire looks at Verty and laughs; then at Miss Lavinia.

“So, it seems,” he says, “that Mr. Roundjacket counsels a bachelor life, eh?  Good! he is a worthy professor, but an indifferent practitioner.  The rascal!  Did you ever hear of such a thing, Lavinia?  I declare, if I were a lady, I should decline to recognize, among my acquaintances, the upholder of such doctrines—­especially when he poisons the ears of boys like Verty with them!”

And the Squire continues to laugh.

“Perhaps,” says Miss Lavinia, with stately dignity, and glancing at Verty as she speaks,—­“perhaps the—­hem—­circumstances which induced Mr. Roundjacket to give the advice, might have been—­been—­peculiar.”

And Miss Lavinia smooths down her black silk with dignity.

“Peculiar?”

“Yes,” says the lady, glancing this time at Redbud.

“How was it, Verty?” the Squire says, turning to the young man.

Verty, conscious of his secret, blushes and stammers; for how can he tell the Squire that Mr. Roundjacket and himself were discussing the propriety of his marrying Redbud?  He is no longer the open, frank, and fearless Verty of old days—­he has become a dissembler, for he is in love.

“I don’t know—­oh, sir—­I could’nt—­Mr. Roundjacket—­”

The Squire laughs.

“There’s some secret here,” he says; “out with it, Verty, or it will choke you.  Come, Rushton, you are an adept—­cross-examine the witness.”