It frequently happened, when agreements, leases, and other deeds were examined, that Roy had to be referred to.  Things would turn out to have been drawn up, agreements made, in precisely the opposite manner to that expected by Lionel.  For some of these Roy might have received sanction; but, for many, Lionel felt sure Roy had acted on his own responsibility.  This chiefly applied to the short period of the management of Mrs. Verner; a little, very little, to the latter year of her husband’s life.  Matiss was Lionel’s agent during his absences; when at home, he took all management into his own hands.

Roy came in.  The same ill-favoured, hard-looking man as ever.  The ostensible business which had brought him up to Verner’s Pride, proved to be of a very trivial nature, and was soon settled.  It is well to say “ostensible,” because a conviction arose in Lionel’s mind afterwards that it was but an excuse:  that Roy made it a pretext for the purpose of obtaining an interview.  Though why, or wherefore, or what he gained by it, Lionel could not imagine.  Roy merely wanted to know if he might be allowed to put a fresh paper on the walls of one of his two upper rooms.  He’d get the paper at his own cost, and hang it at his own leisure, if Mr. Verner had no objection.

“Of course I can have no objection to it,” replied Lionel.  “You need not have lost an afternoon’s work, Roy, to come here to inquire that.  You might have asked me when I saw you by the brick-field this morning.  In fact, there was no necessity to mention it at all.”

“So I might, sir.  But it didn’t come into my mind at the moment to do so.  It’s poor Luke’s room, and the missis, she goes on continual about the state it’s in, if he should come home.  The paper’s all hanging off it in patches, sir, as big as my two hands.  It have got damp through not being used.”

“If it is in that state, and you like to find the time to hang the paper, you may purchase it at my cost,” said Lionel, who was of too just a nature to be a hard landlord.

“Thank ye, sir,” replied Roy, ducking his head.  “It’s well for us, as I often says, that you be our master at last, instead of the Mr. Massingbirds.”

“There was a time when you did not think so, Roy, if my memory serves me rightly,” was the rebuke of Lionel.

“Ah, sir, there’s a old saying, ‘Live and learn.’  That was in the days when I thought you’d be a over strict master; we have got to know better now, taught from experience.  It was a lucky day for the Verner Pride estate when that lost codicil was brought to light!  The Mr. Massingbirds be dead, it’s true, but there’s no knowing what might have happened; the law’s full of quips and turns.  With the codicil found, you can hold your own again’ the world.”

“Who told you anything about the codicil being found?” demanded Lionel.

“Why, sir, it was the talk of the place just about the time we heard of Mr. Fred Massingbird’s death.  Folks said, whether he had died, or whether he had not, you’d have come in all the same.  T’other day, too, I was talking of it to Lawyer Matiss, and he said what a good thing it was, that that there codicil was found.”