s grew moist.

"A pretty fellow I should be, to hoard up money while anybody else
wanted it!" continued Jan. "You and Sibylla make yourselves comfortable,
Lionel, that's all."

They were interrupted by the entrance of John Massingbird and his pipe.
John appeared to find his time hang rather heavily on his hands: _he_
could not say that work was the business of his life. He might be seen
lounging about Deerham at all hours of the day and night, smoking and
gossiping. Jan was often honoured with a visit. Mr. Massingbird of
Verner's Pride was not a whit altered from Mr. Massingbird of nowhere:
John favoured the tap-rooms as much as he had used to favour them.

"The very man I wanted to see!" cried he, giving Lionel a hearty slap on
the shoulder. "I want to talk to you a bit on a matter of business. Will
you come up to Verner's Pride?"

"When?" asked Lionel.

"This evening, if you will. Come to dinner: only our two selves."

"Very well," replied Lionel. And he went out of the surgery, leaving
John Massingbird talking to his brother.

"On business," John Massingbird had said. Was it to ask him about the
mesne profits?--when he could refund them?--to tell him he would be
sued, unless he did refund them? Lionel did not know; but he had been
expecting John Massingbird to take some such steps.

In going back home, choosing the near cross-field way, as Jan often did,
Lionel suddenly came upon Mrs. Peckaby, seated on the stump of a tree,
in a very disconsolate fashion. To witness her thus, off the watch for
the white animal that might be arriving before her door, surprised
Lionel.

"I'm a'most sick of it, sir," she said. "I'm sick to the heart with
looking and watching. My brain gets weary and my eyes gets tired. The
white quadruple don't come, and Peckaby, he's a-rowing at me
everlastin'. I'm come out here for a bit o' peace."

"Don't you think it would be better to give the white donkey up for a
bad job, Mrs. Peckaby?"

"Give it up!" she uttered, aghast. "Give up going to New Jerusalem on a
white donkey! No, sir, that would be a misfortin' in life!"

Lionel smiled sadly as he left her.

"There are worse misfortunes in life, Mrs. Peckaby, than not going to
New Jerusalem on a white donkey."

CHAPTER LXXIII.

A PROPOSAL.

Lionel Verner was seated in the dining-room at Verner's Pride. Not its
master. Its master, John Massingbird, was there, opposite to Lionel.
They had just dined, and John was filling hi