“Arthur!” 

 “It is true, mother. Ay, twenty, it is possible! And do you think that when he can buy up half a dozen of these thickheaded Squires who can just add two to two and make four—that he’ll not count? Do you think that they’ll be able to put him on one side? No! And they know it. They see that the big manufacturers and the big ironmasters and the big bankers who are putting together hundreds of thousands are going to push in among them and can’t be kept out! And therefore trade, as they call it, stinks in their nostrils!” 

 “Oh, Arthur, how horrid!” Mrs. Bourdillon protested, “you are growing as coarse as your uncle. And I’m sure we don’t want a lot of vulgar purse-proud——” 

 “Purse-proud? And what is the Squire? Land-proud! But,” growing more calm, “never mind that. You will take a different view when I tell you something that I heard to-day. Ovington let drop a word about a partnership.” 

 “La, Arthur, but——” 

 “A partnership! Nothing definite, nothing to bind, and not yet, but in the future. It was but a hint. But think of it, mother! It is what I have been aiming at all along, but I didn’t expect to hear of it yet. Not one or two hundred a year, but say, five hundred to begin with, and three, four, five thousand by and by! Five thousand!” His eyes sparkled and he threw back the hair from his forehead with a characteristic gesture. “Five thousand a year! Think of that and don’t talk to me of Orders. Take Orders! Be a beggarly parson while I have that in my power, and in my power while I am still young! For trust me, with Ovington at the helm and the tide at flood we shall move. We shall move, mother! The money is there, lying there, lying everywhere to be picked up. And we shall pick it up.” 

 “You take my breath away!” his mother protested, her faded, delicate face unusually flushed. “Five thousand a year! Gracious me! Why, it is more than your uncle has!” She raised her mittened hands in protest. “Oh, it is impossible!” The vision overcame her. 

 But “It is perfectly possible,” he repeated. “Clement is of no use. He is for ever wanting to be out of doors—a farmer spoiled. Rodd’s a mere mechanic. Ovington cannot do it all, and he sees it. He must have someone he can trust. And then it is not only that I suit him. I am what he is not—a gentleman.” 

 “If you could have it without going to the bank!” Mrs. Bourdillon said. And she sighed, golden as was the 

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