“What, Tom!” the farmer sang out as soon as he had opened the door; “there ye be! at yer Folly agin, are ye?  What good’ll them fashens do to you, I’d like t’know?  Come, shut up, and go and see to Mr. Fev’rel’s mare.  He’s al’ays at that ther’ Folly now.  I say there never were a better name for a book than that ther’ Folly!  Talk about attitudes!”

The farmer laughed his fat sides into a chair, and motioned his visitor to do likewise.

“It’s a comfort they’re most on ’em females,” he pursued, sounding a thwack on his knee as he settled himself agreeably in his seat.  “It don’t matter much what they does, except pinchin’ in—­waspin’ it at the waist.  Give me nature, I say—­woman as she’s made! eh, young gentleman?”

“You seem very lonely here,” said Richard, glancing round, and at the ceiling.

“Lonely?” quoth the farmer.  “Well, for the matter o’ that, we be!—­jest now, so’t happens; I’ve got my pipe, and Tom’ve got his Folly.  He’s on one side the table, and I’m on t’other.  He gapes, and I gazes.  We are a bit lonesome.  But there—­it’s for the best!”

Richard resumed, “I hardly expected to see you to-night, Mr. Blaize.”

“Y’acted like a man in coming, young gentleman, and I does ye honour for it!” said Farmer Blaize with sudden energy and directness.

The thing implied by the farmer’s words caused Richard to take a quick breath.  They looked at each other, and looked away, the farmer thrumming on the arm of his chair.

Above the mantel-piece, surrounded by tarnished indifferent miniatures of high-collared, well-to-do yeomen of the anterior generation, trying their best not to grin, and high-waisted old ladies smiling an encouraging smile through plentiful cap-puckers, there hung a passably executed half-figure of a naval officer in uniform, grasping a telescope under his left arm, who stood forth clearly as not of their kith and kin.  His eyes were blue, his hair light, his bearing that of a man who knows how to carry his head and shoulders.  The artist, while giving him an epaulette to indicate his rank, had also recorded the juvenility which a lieutenant in the naval service can retain after arriving at that position, by painting him with smooth cheeks and fresh ruddy lips.  To this portrait Richard’s eyes were directed.  Farmer Blaize observed it, and said—­

“Her father, sir!”

Richard moderated his voice to praise the likeness.

“Yes,” said the farmer, “pretty well.  Next best to havin’ her, though it’s a long way off that!”

“An old family, Mr. Blaize—­is it not?” Richard asked in as careless a tone as he could assume.

“Gentlefolks—­what’s left of ’em,” replied the farmer with an equally affected indifference.

“And that’s her father?” said Richard, growing bolder to speak of her.

“That’s her father, young gentleman!”

“Mr. Blaize,” Richard turned to face him, and burst out, “where is she?”