“Not speak to her!”

“Not cosset her and spoil her for the next week or two.  Just leave her to herself and let her feel what she’s doing.  Think what Chowton Farm would be, and you with your business all slipping through your fingers.”

“I don’t know that it’s slipping through my fingers at all,” said the attorney mindful of his recent successes.

“If you mean to say you don’t care about it—!”

“I do care about it very much.  You know I do.  You ought not to talk to me in that way.”

“Then why won’t you be said by me?  Of course if you cocker her up, she’ll think she’s to have her own way like a grand lady.  She don’t like him because he works for his bread,—­that’s what it is; and because she’s been taught by that old woman to read poetry.  I never knew that stuff do any good to anybody.  I hate them fandangled lines that are all cut up short to make pretence.  If she wants to read why can’t she take the cookery book and learn something useful?  It just comes to this;—­if you want her to marry Larry Twentyman you had better not notice her for the next fortnight.  Let her go and come and say nothing to her.  She’ll think about it, if she’s left to herself.”

The attorney did want his daughter to marry the man and was half convinced by his wife.  He could not bring himself to be cruel and felt that his heart would bleed every hour of the day that he separated himself from his girl;—­but still he thought that he might perhaps best in this way bring about a result which would be so manifestly for her advantage.  It might be that the books of poetry and the modes of thought which his wife described as “Ushanting” were of a nature to pervert his girl’s mind from the material necessities of life and that a little hardship would bring her round to a more rational condition.  With a very heavy heart he consented to do his part,—­which was to consist mainly of silence.  Any words which might be considered expedient were to come from his wife.

Three or four days went on in this way, which were days of absolute misery to Mary.  She soon perceived and partly understood her father’s silence.  She knew at any rate that for the present she was debarred from his confidence.  Her mother did not say much, but what she did say was all founded on the theory that Ushanting and softness in general are very bad for young women.  Even Dolly and Kate were hard to her,—­each having some dim idea that Mary was to be coerced towards Larry Twentyman and her own good.  At the end of that time, when Mary had been at home nearly a week, Larry came as usual on the Saturday evening.  She, well knowing his habit, took care to be out of the way.  Larry, with a pleasant face, asked after her, and expressed a hope that she had enjoyed herself at Cheltenham.