"I am sure he is; particularly as he has chosen Molly to be his wife. He is just the young man who ought to have a wife."

"Of course he ought."

"Because he can keep a family. But now about my uncle. He is to perform this ceremony of cutting me off. Will he turn out to have had a wife and family in former ages? I have no doubt old Scarborough could manage it, but I don't give my uncle credit for so much cleverness."

"But in future ages--" said the unhappy mother, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes.

"You mean that he is going to have a family?"

"It is all in the hands of Providence," said the parson's wife.

"Yes; that is true. He is not too old yet to be a second Priam, and have his curtains drawn the other way. That's his little game, is it?"

"There's a sort of rumor about, that it is possible."

"And who is the lady?"

"You may be sure there will be no lack of a lady if he sets his mind upon it. I was turning it over in my mind, and I thought of Matilda Thoroughbung."

"Joshua's aunt!"

"Well; she is Joshua's aunt, no doubt. I did just whisper the idea to Joshua, and he says that she is fool enough for anything. She has twenty-five thousand pounds of her own, but she lives all by herself."

"I know where she lives,--just out of Buntingford, as you go to Royston.

But she's not alone. Is Uncle Prosper to marry Miss Tickle also?" Miss Tickle was an estimable lady living as companion to Miss Thoroughbung.

"I don't know how they may manage; but it has to be thought of, Harry.

We only know that your uncle has been twice to Buntingford."

"The lady is fifty, at any rate."

"The lady is barely forty. She gives out that she is thirty-six. And he could settle a jointure on her which would leave the property not worth having."

"What can I do?"

"Yes, indeed, my dear; what can you do?"

"Why is he going to upset all the arrangements of my life, and his life, after such a fashion as this?"

"That's just what your father says."

"I suppose he can do it. The law will allow him. But the injustice would be monstrous. I did not ask him to take me by the hand when I was a boy and lead me into this special walk of life. It has been his own doing.

How will he look me in the face and tell me that he is going to marry a wife? I shall look him in the face and tell him of my wife."

"But is that settled?"

"Yes, mother; it is settled. Wish me joy for having won the finest lady that ever walked the earth." His mother blessed him,--but said nothing about the finest lady,--who at that moment she believed to be the future bride of Mr. Joshua Thoroughbung. "And when I shall tell my uncle that it is so, what will he say to me? Will he have the face then to tell me that I am to be cut out of Buston? I doubt whether he will have the courage."

"He has thought of that, Harry."

"How thought of it, mother?"

"He has given orders that he is not to see you."

"Not to see me!"

"So he declares. He has written a long letter to your father, in which he says that he would be spared the agony of an interview."

"What! is it all done, then?"

"Your father got the letter yesterday. It must have taken my poor brother a week to write it."

"And he tells the whole plan,--Matilda Thoroughbung, and the future family?"

"No, he does not say anything about Miss Thoroughbung He says that he must make other arrangements about the property."

"He can't make other arrangements; that is, not until the boy is born.

It may be a long time first, you know."

"But the jointure?"

"What does Molly say about it?"

"Molly is mad about it and so is Joshua. Joshua talks about it just as though he were one of us, and he says that the old people at Buntingford would not hear of it." The old people spoken of were the father and mother of Joshua, and the half-brother of Miss Matilda Thoroughbung.

"But what can they do?"

"They can do nothing. If Miss Matilda likes Uncle Prosper--"

"Likes, my dear! How young you are! Of course she would like a country house to live in, and the park, and the county society. And she would like somebody to live with besides Miss Tickle."

"My uncle, for instance."

"Yes, your uncle."

"If I had my choice, mother, I should prefer Miss Tickle."

"Because you are a silly boy. But what are you to do now?"

"In this long letter which he has written to my father does he give no reason?"

"Your father will show you the letter. Of course he gives reasons. He says that you have done something which you ought not to have done--about that wretched Mountjoy Scarborough."

"What does he know about it?--the idiot!"

"Oh, Harry!"

"Well, mother, what better can I say of him? He has taken me as a child and fashioned my life for me; has said that this property should be mine, and has put an income into my hand as though I were an eldest son; has repeatedly declared, when his voice was more potent than mine, that I should follow no profession. He has bound himself to me, telling all the world that I was his heir. And now he casts me out because he has heard some c.o.c.k-and-bull story, of the truth of which he knows nothing.

What better can I say of him than call him an idiot? He must be that or else a heartless knave. And he says that he does not mean to see me,--me with whose life he has thus been empowered to interfere, so as to blast it if not to bless it, and intends to turn me adrift as he might do a dog that did not suit him! And because he knows that he cannot answer me he declares that he will not see me."