“Never mind, you’ll give more pleasure in this quiet way,” said Mr. Irwine.  “In this sort of thing people are constantly confounding liberality with riot and disorder.  It sounds very grand to say that so many sheep and oxen were roasted whole, and everybody ate who liked to come; but in the end it generally happens that no one has had an enjoyable meal.  If the people get a good dinner and a moderate quantity of ale in the middle of the day, they’ll be able to enjoy the games as the day cools.  You can’t hinder some of them from getting too much towards evening, but drunkenness and darkness go better together than drunkenness and daylight.”

“Well, I hope there won’t be much of it.  I’ve kept the Treddleston people away by having a feast for them in the town; and I’ve got Casson and Adam Bede and some other good fellows to look to the giving out of ale in the booths, and to take care things don’t go too far.  Come, let us go up above now and see the dinner-tables for the large tenants.”

They went up the stone staircase leading simply to the long gallery above the cloisters, a gallery where all the dusty worthless old pictures had been banished for the last three generations—­mouldy portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her ladies, General Monk with his eye knocked out, Daniel very much in the dark among the lions, and Julius Caesar on horseback, with a high nose and laurel crown, holding his Commentaries in his hand.

“What a capital thing it is that they saved this piece of the old abbey!” said Arthur.  “If I’m ever master here, I shall do up the gallery in first-rate style.  We’ve got no room in the house a third as large as this.  That second table is for the farmers’ wives and children:  Mrs. Best said it would be more comfortable for the mothers and children to be by themselves.  I was determined to have the children, and make a regular family thing of it.  I shall be ‘the old squire’ to those little lads and lasses some day, and they’ll tell their children what a much finer young fellow I was than my own son.  There’s a table for the women and children below as well.  But you will see them all—­you will come up with me after dinner, I hope?”

“Yes, to be sure,” said Mr. Irwine.  “I wouldn’t miss your maiden speech to the tenantry.”

“And there will be something else you’ll like to hear,” said Arthur.  “Let us go into the library and I’ll tell you all about it while my grandfather is in the drawing-room with the ladies.  Something that will surprise you,” he continued, as they sat down.  “My grandfather has come round after all.”

“What, about Adam?”