A Country Wooing Read Free Page A

son in mind.”
    “Charles never gave it to you,” Mrs. Wickfield said, nodding her head in approval of what she had heard.
    “He would hardly do so when Alex was leaving for Spain,” Anne pointed out.
    “Why, Alex was here for two years, and...” Mrs. Wickfield became aware of a tension in the atmosphere and let her speech peter out to silence.
    “Charles didn’t intend to deprive me of it,” Alex said, but coldly, as one doing his duty. “He mentioned my having the use of it. I don’t approve of the system of primogeniture we follow in England. If a man has five sons, as my father had, he ought to make some provisions for them all, and not give the lot to the eldest. It’s foolishness to give one man so much consequence and put the others at his mercy, or the mercy of their own wits. Of course, I don’t have anything equal to Sawburne to give Willie and Bung, but I’ll do all in my power to see them started in some profitable career, or try to help them set up a place of their own if that’s what they want.”
    Anne interpreted this to mean he’d make a good marriage. How else did he plan to have all this beneficence to distribute? Her mother said, “Why, Willie and Bung both want to be soldiers, like you. You won’t have to do any more than buy them a commission.”
    “Boys of twelve don’t know what they want. They think it’s all parades and playing with guns. It’s not like that, I promise you,” he said grimly. “I’ll give them a truer idea of what a soldier’s life is like.”
    Willie and Bung were twins, so much alike that their own family had trouble telling them apart. Recently Bung had knocked a chip off the corner of his front tooth. It would not have bothered him a whit if only Willie could have done the same, but till they managed to get an identical chip off Willie’s, their favorite stunt of posing as each other was ruined.
    “When do you plan to turn Sawburne over to Robin?” Anne asked. “We shall miss him when he goes.”
    Alex looked alert at this question and in fact didn’t answer it. “It’s only five miles away. Not too far a distance to travel, if he has some special reason. Has he?” Anne and Mrs. Wickfield blinked a question at each other. Alex’s voice was suddenly thin and cold as ice. “Is he seeing some local lady? He didn’t tell me so. I hope she’s not ineligible.”
    “Oh, no!” Anne said. “Good gracious, he’s only twenty-one, Alex. A bit young to shackle himself for life.’’ She noted, but didn’t mention, the word “ineligible.” It seemed Alex’s ambitions extended to the whole family.
    “Won’t you need Robin to help you at Penholme?” Mrs. Wickfield asked. “It’s been a long time without a master. Robin and Mrs. Tannie do the best they can, but that last crew of bucks Charlie had staying there made a sorry shambles of the place. Shot off their pistols in the armaments room, and the south wall is still full of holes. One of them set fire to his room—the blue suite had its carpets burned. A set of black rags hang at the windows to this day. You’ll need an extra man for the farms. And for the Hall itself, what you need is a wife, my lad,” she said firmly, but was subtle enough not to glance at her daughter.
    “Carpets and draperies won’t take much mending,” Alex answered. “It’s the home farm and the tenant farms I’m worried about. I haven’t had a look around yet. I know the man I hired for Charles before I left didn’t stay long. I understand a Pat Buckram is acting as bailiff nowadays. Robin was overseeing things as best he could, but he’s still green. I shan’t send him to Sawburne till he’s dry behind the ears.”
    “It’s a good thing you’re back,” Mrs. Wickfield declared, and seemed in much of a mind to go on disparaging Charles, till Anne stopped her.
    “There’s no need to go into all that, Mama. What’s done is done.”
    “Best not to speak ill of the dead, so I’ll say no more about