“Three half-sisters of my father’s,” says Dick, “as old as three men each of ’em, and not a notion of dying among ’em!  They’ll see me out, I’ll swear!”

It was then that that idle money had been tactfully referred to.

“I’ll knock better interest out of you, Major, than the bank’ll give me!” said the Big Doctor, jovially.  “I want no security from you!  Your word—­”

“Oh, that will never do, my dear fellow,” Dick had replied, as he was meant to reply.  “Of course it must be a pukka business deal.  I’ll give you—­”

In his relief, Dick was ready to give to this kind William of Deloraine any security that he would suggest.  It was, of course, a purely nominal affair—­but still—­what about a mortgage on the house and demesne?  How would that do?

The Doctor thought it would do very well.

It should be established, while it was still possible to induce the reader to accept such a statement, that the Big Doctor was, as he himself might have said, “not too bad a fellow altogether!” In public life, a fighter, wily and skilled; compassionate to the poor, yet exacting, implacably, practical recognition of his compassion.  In his own house, easy-going and autocratic; in his Church, a slave; a confidential slave, whose gladiatorial gifts were valued, and whose idiosyncrasies might be humoured, but none the less, a slave.  He was like an elephant in his hugeness, and suppleness, his dangerousness, and his gentleness.  His head was not crowned with the bald benevolence that an elephant wears, but seated on his neck was a mahout, and the mahout was Father Greer, the Parish Priest of Cluhir.

Now, on this quiet evening, he sat and smoked by the fire, and, touching “the tender stops of various quills,” his eager thought paused longest on the note that stood for Tishy.  Tishy was, in her own way, as sound an asset as any that he possessed, a thoroughly well-made article, a right-down handsome girl, the Big Doctor thought complacently, good enough for any position, and for any man.

“But she’s not for any man, I can tell them!” thought Tishy’s father; “that’s just where the difference of it is!  I’ll see to that, you may take your oath!”

Then he began to consider his son.  He could not feel the same confidence in Barty that Tishy inspired.  Where Barty got hold of all his dam-silly notions was more than anyone, least of all his father, could imagine.  Nevertheless, they had had their uses, and might still justify themselves “in a sense,” he thought; “if not in one way, maybe in another.”  He moved on to his wife.  How could she contribute to the Great Ideas?  Ideas were not much in her line, but if you told her what to do, she’d do it.  After all, that was the main thing.  Women’s own notions were often more bother than they were worth.  Poor Annie!  His big mouth, under the coarse black moustache, spread into a smile, and his blue-grey eyes smiled with it.  “I