down on one like her.  She saw him when he was at the Hall.  He did not notice any change.  He was exceedingly gentle and courteous.  More than once she discovered his eyes dwelling on her, and then he looked hurriedly at his mother, and Laetitia had to shut her mind from thinking, lest thinking should be a sin and hope a guilty spectre.  But had his mother objected to her?  She could not avoid asking herself.  His tour of the globe had been undertaken at his mother’s desire; she was an ambitious lady, in failing health; and she wished to have him living with her at Patterne, yet seemed to agree that he did wisely to reside in London.

One day Sir Willoughby, in the quiet manner which was his humour, informed her that he had become a country gentleman; he had abandoned London, he loathed it as the burial-place of the individual man.  He intended to sit down on his estates and have his cousin Vernon Whitford to assist him in managing them, he said; and very amusing was his description of his cousin’s shifts to live by literature, and add enough to a beggarly income to get his usual two months of the year in the Alps.  Previous to his great tour, Willoughby had spoken of Vernon’s judgement with derision; nor was it entirely unknown that Vernon had offended his family pride by some extravagant act.  But after their return he acknowledged Vernon’s talents, and seemed unable to do without him.

The new arrangement gave Laetitia a companion for her walks.  Pedestrianism was a sour business to Willoughby, whose exclamation of the word indicated a willingness for any amount of exercise on horseback; but she had no horse, and so, while he hunted, Laetitia and Vernon walked, and the neighbourhood speculated on the circumstances, until the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne engaged her more frequently for carriage exercise, and Sir Willoughby was observed riding beside them.

A real and sunny pleasure befell Laetitia in the establishment of young Crossjay Patterne under her roof; the son of the lieutenant, now captain, of Marines; a boy of twelve with the sprights of twelve boys in him, for whose board and lodgement Vernon provided by arrangement with her father.  Vernon was one of your men that have no occupation for their money, no bills to pay for repair of their property, and are insane to spend.  He had heard of Captain Patterne’s large family, and proposed to have his eldest boy at the Hall, to teach him; but Willoughby declined to house the son of such a father, predicting that the boy’s hair would be red, his skin eruptive, and his practices detestable.  So Vernon, having obtained Mr. Dale’s consent to accommodate this youth, stalked off to Devonport, and brought back a rosy-cheeked, round-bodied rogue of a boy, who fell upon meats and puddings, and defeated them, with a captivating simplicity in his confession that he had never had enough to eat in his life.  He had gone through a training for a plentiful table.  At first, after a number of helps, young Crossjay would sit and sigh heavily, in contemplation of the unfinished dish.  Subsequently, he told his host and hostess that he had two sisters above his own age, and three brothers and two sisters younger than he:  “All hungry!” said die boy.