“Nay; I can’t take thee with me to-day. I am going to Squire Ayton’s, and from there to Rudby’s, and very like as far as Ormesby and Pickering.”

“Then you will not be home to dinner?”

“Not I. I shall get my dinner somewhere.”

“Can I come and meet you?”

“Thou hadst better not.”

At this moment Mrs. Atheling entered, and Kate, turning to her, said, “Mother, I am not to ride with father to-day. He is going a visiting,–going to get his dinner ‘somewhere,’ and he thinks I had better not come to meet him.”

“Father is right. Father knows he is not to trust to when he goes ‘somewhere’ for his dinner. For he will call for Ayton, and they 25 two will get Rudby, and then it will be Ormesby, and so by dinner-time they may draw rein at Pickering, and Pickering will start ‘Corn Laws’ and ‘Protection for the Farmers,’ and midnight will be talked away. Is not that about right, John?” but she asked the question with a smile that proved Maude Atheling was once more the wise and loving “guardian angel” of her husband.

25

“Thou knowest all about it, Maude.”

“I know enough, any way, to advise thee to stand by thy own heart, and to say and do what it counsels thee. Pickering is made after the meanest model of a Yorkshireman; and when a Yorkshireman turns out to be a failure, he is a ruin, and no mistake.”

“What by that? I can’t quarrel with Pickering. You may kick up a dust with your neighbour, but, sooner or later, it will settle on your own door-stone. It is years and years since I learned that lesson. And as for Pickering’s ideas, many a good squire holds the same.”

“I don’t doubt it. Whatever the Ass says, the asses believe; thou wilt find that out when thou goest to Parliament.”

“Are you really going to Parliament, Father?”

“Wouldst thou like me to go, Kate?”

“Yes, if I may go to London with you.”

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