the affair seriously enough.  Brooke was really culpable; he ought to have hindered it.  Who could speak to him?  Something might be done perhaps even now, at least to defer the marriage.  On his way home he turned into the Rectory and asked for Mr. Cadwallader.  Happily, the Rector was at home, and his visitor was shown into the study, where all the fishing tackle hung.  But he himself was in a little room adjoining, at work with his turning apparatus, and he called to the baronet to join him there.  The two were better friends than any other landholder and clergyman in the county—­a significant fact which was in agreement with the amiable expression of their faces.

Mr. Cadwallader was a large man, with full lips and a sweet smile; very plain and rough in his exterior, but with that solid imperturbable ease and good-humor which is infectious, and like great grassy hills in the sunshine, quiets even an irritated egoism, and makes it rather ashamed of itself.  “Well, how are you?” he said, showing a hand not quite fit to be grasped.  “Sorry I missed you before.  Is there anything particular?  You look vexed.”

Sir James’s brow had a little crease in it, a little depression of the eyebrow, which he seemed purposely to exaggerate as he answered.

“It is only this conduct of Brooke’s.  I really think somebody should speak to him.”

“What? meaning to stand?” said Mr. Cadwallader, going on with the arrangement of the reels which he had just been turning.  “I hardly think he means it.  But where’s the harm, if he likes it?  Any one who objects to Whiggery should be glad when the Whigs don’t put up the strongest fellow.  They won’t overturn the Constitution with our friend Brooke’s head for a battering ram.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that,” said Sir James, who, after putting down his hat and throwing himself into a chair, had begun to nurse his leg and examine the sole of his boot with much bitterness.  “I mean this marriage.  I mean his letting that blooming young girl marry Casaubon.”

“What is the matter with Casaubon?  I see no harm in him—­if the girl likes him.”

“She is too young to know what she likes.  Her guardian ought to interfere.  He ought not to allow the thing to be done in this headlong manner.  I wonder a man like you, Cadwallader—­a man with daughters, can look at the affair with indifference:  and with such a heart as yours!  Do think seriously about it.”

“I am not joking; I am as serious as possible,” said the Rector, with a provoking little inward laugh.  “You are as bad as Elinor.  She has been wanting me to go and lecture Brooke; and I have reminded her that her friends had a very poor opinion of the match she made when she married me.”

“But look at Casaubon,” said Sir James, indignantly.  “He must be fifty, and I don’t believe he could ever have been much more than the shadow of a man.  Look at his legs!”

“Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your own way in the world.  You don’t under stand women.  They don’t admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.  Elinor used to tell her sisters that she married me for my ugliness—­it was so various and amusing that it had quite conquered her prudence.”