“We don’t want to be popular here.  When we have refurnished the house, we will bring our company from Oxford and London and elsewhere.  We will have fine dinners and balls, hunting-parties and fishing-parties; and, depend upon it, we shall very soon have these shepherd lords and gentlemen begging for our favor.”

“Oh, you don’t know them, Julius!  They would not break bread with us if they were starving.”

“Very well.  What do I care?”

But he did care.  When the wagoners driving their long teams pretended not to hear his greeting, for the jingling of their bells, he knew it was pretence, and the wagoners’ aversion hurt him.  When the herdsmen sauntered away from his path, and preferred not to talk to him, he felt the bitterness of their dislike, though they were only shepherds.  When the gentlemen of the neighborhood looked straight before them, and did not see him in their path, he burned with an indignation he would have liked well to express.  But no one took the trouble to offend him by word or deed, and a man cannot pick a quarrel with people for simply letting him alone.

Sophia’s opinion recalled one or two of these events that were particularly galling; and he finished his breakfast in a sulky, leisurely fashion, to such reflections as they evoked.  Then, with a cigar in his mouth, he went to the master’s room to see Moser.  He had been told that other parties were there also, but he did not surmise that their business was identical.  Yet he noticed the clergyman on entering, and appeared inclined to attend to his request first; but as he courteously waved his claim away, and retired to the other end of the room, Julius said curtly,—­

“Well, Mr. Moser, good-morning, sir.”

The lawyer was pretending to be absorbed in the captions of the papers in his hand, for he was offended at being kept waiting so long:  “As if a bite of victuals was of more ado than business that could bring Matthew Moser all the road from Kendal.”

“Good-morning, Mr. Sandal.”

The omission of “Squire,” and the substitution of “Mr.,” annoyed Julius very much, though he had not a suspicion of the lawyer’s errand; and he corrected the mistake with a bland smile on his lips, and an angry light in his eyes.  Moser, in reply, selected one particular paper, and put it into the hand of Julius.

“Acting for Squire Sandal, I would be a middling bad sort of a lawyer to give you his name.  Eh?”

“You are talking in riddles, sir.”

“Eh!  But I always read my riddles, Mr. Sandal.  I am here to take possession of house and land, for the real heir of Sandal-Side.”

“I bought his right, as you know very well.  You have Harry Sandal’s own acknowledgment.”

“Eh?  But you see, Harry Sandal never had a penny-worth of right to sell.  Launcelot Sandal left a son, and for him I am acting.  Eh?”

“Launcelot Sandal was drowned.  He never married.”