“Aye, aye,” said old Martin, walking slowly under the shade of the lodge porch, from which he could see the aged party descend.  “I remember Jacob Taft walking fifty mile after the Scotch raybels, when they turned back from Stoniton.”

He felt himself quite a youngster, with a long life before him, as he saw the Hayslope patriarch, old Feyther Taft, descend from the waggon and walk towards him, in his brown nightcap, and leaning on his two sticks.

“Well, Mester Taft,” shouted old Martin, at the utmost stretch of his voice—­for though he knew the old man was stone deaf, he could not omit the propriety of a greeting—­“you’re hearty yet.  You can enjoy yoursen to-day, for-all you’re ninety an’ better.”

“Your sarvant, mesters, your sarvant,” said Feyther Taft in a treble tone, perceiving that he was in company.

The aged group, under care of sons or daughters, themselves worn and grey, passed on along the least-winding carriage-road towards the house, where a special table was prepared for them; while the Poyser party wisely struck across the grass under the shade of the great trees, but not out of view of the house-front, with its sloping lawn and flower-beds, or of the pretty striped marquee at the edge of the lawn, standing at right angles with two larger marquees on each side of the open green space where the games were to be played.  The house would have been nothing but a plain square mansion of Queen Anne’s time, but for the remnant of an old abbey to which it was united at one end, in much the same way as one may sometimes see a new farmhouse rising high and prim at the end of older and lower farm-offices.  The fine old remnant stood a little backward and under the shadow of tall beeches, but the sun was now on the taller and more advanced front, the blinds were all down, and the house seemed asleep in the hot midday.  It made Hetty quite sad to look at it:  Arthur must be somewhere in the back rooms, with the grand company, where he could not possibly know that she was come, and she should not see him for a long, long while—­not till after dinner, when they said he was to come up and make a speech.

But Hetty was wrong in part of her conjecture.  No grand company was come except the Irwines, for whom the carriage had been sent early, and Arthur was at that moment not in a back room, but walking with the rector into the broad stone cloisters of the old abbey, where the long tables were laid for all the cottage tenants and the farm-servants.  A very handsome young Briton he looked to-day, in high spirits and a bright-blue frock-coat, the highest mode—­his arm no longer in a sling.  So open-looking and candid, too; but candid people have their secrets, and secrets leave no lines in young faces.

“Upon my word,” he said, as they entered the cool cloisters, “I think the cottagers have the best of it:  these cloisters make a delightful dining-room on a hot day.  That was capital advice of yours, Irwine, about the dinners—­to let them be as orderly and comfortable as possible, and only for the tenants:  especially as I had only a limited sum after all; for though my grandfather talked of a carte blanche, he couldn’t make up his mind to trust me, when it came to the point.”