“He will always be that, I am sure, Squire.  He told us that you had offered to set him up on a farm, but he is quite right to say no.  I don’t say that if it had been with somebody else, his mother and I might not have felt rather sore that our eldest boy should have taken to service; but, of course, it is different with you, Squire.  It is only natural that a Lechmere should serve a Mallett, seeing that our fathers have been your fathers’ tenants for hundreds of years, so that even if all this had not happened we should not have minded.  As it is, we are proud that he is with you; and it seems natural that, after wandering about the world and fighting with those black villains out there, he should never be content to go on as he was before, or to settle down to farming.”

“It is like man like master, in this case,” Mallett laughed.  “After I have once been over the estate, and seen all the tenants, and learned that everyone is satisfied and everything going on well, I shall very soon begin to feel restless, and shall be running off somewhere.  You see, I have never been broken in to a country life.  I have no idea of becoming an absentee; but I think a month or two together will be as much as I can stand, at any rate as long as I am a bachelor.”

“That is just what I was saying, Squire,” the farmer’s wife said, speaking for the first time—­for during the first portion of the conversation she had been crying quietly, and had since been busying herself in placing decanters and glasses and a huge homemade cake on the table.  “We all hope that you will soon bring a mistress home.  I said only this morning that you would never be settling down until you did.

“And now, will you take a glass of wine and a slice of cake, Squire?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lechmere, I will; especially a piece of your cake.  Many and many a slice of it have I had here when a boy, and famously good it always was.”

Major Mallett ate two big slices of cake, drank a glass of wine, and refusing the offer of a second glass, got up to go, saying: 

“No, Mrs. Lechmere; I must not treat myself to another glass now.  I am going round to four or five other houses before I return to lunch, and I know that the tray will be put on the table everywhere.  I can say that I have eaten so much cake here that I cannot eat more.  But I know I shall have to drink a glass of wine at each place, and I can assure you that I am not accustomed to tipple in the morning.

“Ah, here come your two sons across the fields.  I will meet them at the gate.  If I were to begin a regular talk with Bob today, the morning would be gone.”

“George has changed wonderfully,” Mrs. Lechmere said, as they accompanied him to the gate.  “It ain’t his face so much, though he is well nigh as brown as that cake, but it is his figure.  I should not have known him if he had not come along with Bob.  He walks altogether different.”