“Me?  If you must know, sir, I’m Mrs. Pettigrew’s mother, the Linendraper’s establishment, sir; a-going down for Christmas, sir!”

“Humph!” says Mark:  “you see—­was sure I knew her—­know everybody here.  As I said, if she wasn’t Mrs. Grove, she was somebody else.  Ever in these parts before?”

“Never:  but I have heard a good deal of them; and very much charmed with them I am.  I have seldom seen a more distinctive specimen of English scenery.”

“And how you are improving round here!” said Claude, who knew Mark’s weak points, and wanted to draw him out.  “Your homesteads seem all new; three fields have been thrown into one, I fancy, over half the farms.”

Mark broke out at once on his favourite topic,—­“I believe you!  I’m making the mare go here in Whitford, without the money too, sometimes.  I’m steward now, bailiff—­ha! ha! these four years past—­to Mrs. Lavington’s Irish husband; I wanted him to have a regular agent, a canny Scot, or Yorkshireman.  Faith, the poor man couldn’t afford it, and so fell back on old Mark.  Paddy loves a job, you know.  So I’ve the votes and the fishing, and send him his rents, and manage all the rest pretty much, my own way.”

When the name of Lavington was mentioned, Mark observed Stangrave start; and an expression passed over his face difficult to be defined—­it seemed to Mark mingled pride and shame.  He turned to Claude, and said, in a low voice, but loud enough for Mark to hear,—­

“Lavington?  Is this their country also?  As I am going to visit the graves of my ancestors, I suppose I ought to visit those of hers.”

Mark caught the words which he was not intended to.

“Eh?  Sir, do you belong to these parts?”

“My family, I believe, lived in the neighbourhood of Whitbury, at a place called Stangrave-end.”

“To be sure!  Old farm-house now; fine old oak carving in it, though; fine old family it must have been; church full of their monuments.  Hum,—­ha!  Well! that’s pleasant, now!  I’ve often heard there were good old families away there in New England; never thought that there were Whitbury people among them.  Hum—­well! the world’s not so big as people think, after all.  And you spoke of the Lavingtons?  They are great folks here—­or were—­” He was going to rattle on:  but he saw a pained expression on both the travellers’ faces, and Stangrave stopped him, somewhat drily—­

“I know nothing of them, I assure you, or they of me.  Your country here is certainly charming, and shows little of those signs of decay which some people in America impute to it.”

“Decay!” Mark went off at score.  “Decay be hanged?  There’s life in the old dog yet, sir! and dead pigs are looking up since free trade and emigration.  Cheap bread and high wages now:  and instead of lands going out of cultivation, as they threatened—­bosh! there’s a greater breadth down in wheat in the vale now than there ever was; and look at the roots.