He set to counting the promises of votes, disdaining fears and reflections.  Concerts, cricket-matches, Balls, dinner-parties, and the round of the canvass, and speech-making at our gatherings, occupied every minute of my time, except on Saturday evenings, when I rode over to Riversley with Temple to spend the Sunday.  Temple, always willing to play second to me, and a trifle melancholy under his partial eclipse-which, perhaps, suggested the loss of Janet to him—­would have it that this election was one of the realizations of our boyish dreams of greatness.  The ladies were working rosettes for me.  My aunt Dorothy talked very anxiously about the day appointed by my father to repay the large sum expended.  All hung upon that day, she said, speaking from her knowledge of the squire.  She was moved to an extreme distress by the subject.

’He is confident, Harry; but where can he obtain the money?  If your grandfather sees it invested in your name in Government securities, he will be satisfied, not otherwise:  nothing less will satisfy him; and if that is not done, he will join you and your father together in his mind; and as he has hitherto treated one he will treat both.  I know him.  He is just, to the extent of his vision; but he will not be able to separate you.  He is aware that your father has not restricted his expenses since they met; he will say you should have used your influence.’

She insisted on this, until the tears streamed from her eyes, telling me that my grandfather was the most upright and unsuspicious of men, and precisely on that account the severest when he thought he had been deceived.  The fair chances of my election did not console her, as it did me, by dazzling me.  She affirmed strongly that she was sure my father expected success at the election to be equivalent to the promised restitution of the money, and begged me to warn him that nothing short of the sum squandered would be deemed sufficient at Riversley.  My dear aunt, good woman though she was, seemed to me to be waxing miserly.  The squire had given her the name of Parsimony; she had vexed him, Janet told me, by subscribing a miserable sum to a sailors’ asylum that he patronized—­a sum he was ashamed to see standing as the gift of a Beltham; and she had stopped the building of a wing of her village school-house, designed upon his plan.  Altogether, she was fretful and distressful; she appeared to think that I could have kept my father in better order.  Riversley was hearing new and strange reports of him.  But how could I at Chippenden thwart his proceedings in London?  Besides, he was serving me indefatigably.

It can easily be imagined what description of banter he had to meet and foil.

’This gentleman is obliging enough to ask me, “How about the Royal Arms?” If in his extreme consideration he means to indicate my Arms, I will inform him that they are open to him; he shall find entertainment for man and beast; so he is doubly assured of a welcome.’