“Getting on first-rate, thank you kindly, sir,” replied Swan, leaning down into his former easy attitude, and keeping his Sunday hat under his arm.

“That boy, though I say it, allers was as steady as old Time.  He’s at Birmingham now.  I rather expect he’ll be wanting to settle shortly.”

As he evidently wished to be asked a further question, Mrs. Henfrey did ask one.

“No, ma’am, no,” was the reply; “he have not told me nor his mother the young woman’s name; but he said if he got her he should be the luckiest fellow that ever was.”  Here, from intense confusion and shyness, Laura dropped the book, St. George picked it up for her, and nobody thought of connecting the fall with the story, the unconscious Nicholas continuing.  “So thereby his mother judged that it would come to something, for that’s what a young chap mostly says when he has made up his mind; but I shall allers say, sir,” he went on, “that with the good education as I gave him, it’s a pity he took to such a poor trade.  He airly showed a bent for it; I reckon it was the putty that got the better of him.”

“Ah,” said John Mortimer, “and I only wonder, Swan, that it didn’t get the better of me!  I used to lay out a good deal of pocket-money in it at one time, and many a private smash have I perpetrated in the panes of out-houses, and at the back of the conservatory, that I might afterwards mend them with my own putty and tools.  I can remember my father’s look of pride and pleasure when he would pass and find me so quietly, and, as he thought, so meritoriously employed.”

And now this ordeal was over.  The gardener was suffered to depart, and the ladies went up-stairs to dress for the flower-show.

“Oh, Amelia!” exclaimed Laura, pressing her cold hands to her burning cheeks, “I feel as if I almost hated that man.  What business had he to talk of Joseph in that way?”

Amelia, on the contrary, was very much pleased with Swan, because he had clearly shown that he was ignorant of this affair.  “He seems a very respectable person,” she replied.  “His cottage, I know, is near the end of John Mortimer’s garden.  I’ve seen it; but I never thought of asking his name.  It certainly would be mortifying for you to have to go and stay there with him and Joseph’s mother.  I suppose, though, that the Mortimers would have to call.”

Amelia felt a certain delight in presenting this picture to Laura.

“I would never go near them!” exclaimed Laura, very angry with her sister-in-law.

“Why not?” persisted Amelia, determined to make Laura see things as they were.  “You could not possibly wish to divide a man from his own family; they have never injured you.”

“Oh that he and I were on a desert island together,” said Laura.  She had often said that before to Amelia.  She now felt that if Joseph’s father and mother were there also, and there was nobody else to see, she should not mind their presence; besides, it would be convenient, they would act almost as servants.