‘I thought we were to have dined at five,’ he replied, in a low wailing voice.

‘No, papa, indeed indeed you said six.’

‘That was for yesterday.’

‘You said we were to make it six while Mr Belton was here.’

‘Very well if it must be, I suppose it must be.’

‘You don’t mean on my account,’ said Will.  ’I’ll undertake to eat my dinner, sir, at any hour that you’ll undertake to give it me.  If there’s a strong point about me at all, it is my appetite.’

Clara, when she went to her father’s room that evening, told him what Mr Belton had said about the shooting, knowing that her father’s feelings would agree with those which had been expressed by her cousin.  Mr Amedroz of course made this an occasion for further grumbling, suggesting that Belton wanted to get the shooting for himself as he had got the farm.  But, nevertheless, the effect which Clara had intended was produced, and before she left him he had absolutely proposed that the shooting and the land should go together.

‘I’m sure that Mr Belton doesn’t mean that at all,’ said Clara.

‘I don’t care what he means,’ said the squire.

‘And it wouldn’t do to treat Colonel Askerton in that way,’ said Clara.

‘I shall treat him just as I like,’ said the squire.

CHAPTER IV

SAFE AGAINST LOVE-MAKING

A dear cousin, and safe against love-making!  This was Clara’s verdict respecting Will Belton, as she lay thinking of him in bed that night.  Why that warranty against love-making should be a virtue in her eyes I cannot, perhaps, explain.  But all young ladies are apt to talk to themselves in such phrases about gentlemen with whom they are thrown into chance intimacy as though love-making were in itself a thing injurious and antagonistic to happiness, instead of being, as it is, the very salt of life.  Safe against love-making!  And yet Mrs Askerton, her friend, had spoken of the probability of such love-making as being the great advantage of his coming.  And there could not be a second opinion as to the expediency of a match between her and her cousin in a worldly point of view.  Clara, moreover, had already perceived that he was a man fit to guide a wife, very good- humoured and good-tempered also, anxious to give pleasure to others, a man of energy and forethought, who would be sure to do well in the world and hold his head always high among his fellows as good a husband as a girl could have.  Nevertheless, she congratulated herself in that she felt satisfied that he was safe against love-making!  Might it be possible that the pressing of hands at Taunton had been so tender, and those last words spoken with Captain Aylmer so soft, that on his account she felt delighted to think that her cousin was warranted not to make love?