e their places when they have flitted
away for ever; but neither the regret nor the remorse can recall the
opportunity lost.

Lionel pressed the necessity upon John Massingbird. It was all he could
do now. John received it with complacent good-humour, and laughed at
Lionel for making the request. But that was all.

"Set about draining Clay Lane, and build up new tenements in place of
the old?" cried he. "What next, Lionel?"

"Look at the sickness the present state of things brings," returned
Lionel. "It is what ought to have been altered years ago."

"Ah!" said John. "Why didn't you alter it, then, when you had Verner's
Pride?"

"You may well ask! It was my first thought when I came into the estate.
I would set about that; I would set about other improvements. Some I did
carry out, as you know; but these, the most needful, I left in abeyance.
It lies on my conscience now."

They were in the study. Lionel was at the desk, some papers before him;
John Massingbird had lounged in for a chat--as he was fond of doing, to
the interruption of Lionel. He was leaning against the door-post; his
attire not precisely such that a gentleman might choose, who wished to
send his photograph to make a morning call. His pantaloons were hitched
up by a belt; braces, John said, were not fashionable at the diggings,
and he had learned the comfort of doing without them; a loose sort of
round drab coat without tails; no waistcoat; a round brown hat, much
bent, and a pair of slippers. Such was John Massingbird's favourite
costume, and he might be seen in it at all hours of the day. When he
wanted to go abroad, his toilette was made, as the French say, by the
exchanging of the slippers for boots, and the taking in his hand a club
stick. John's whiskers were growing again, and promised to be as fine a
pair as he had worn before going out to Australia; and now he was
letting his beard grow, but it looked very grim and stubbly. Truth to
say, a stranger passing through the village and casting his eyes on Mr.
John Massingbird, would have taken him to be a stable helper, rather
than the master of that fine place, Verner's Pride. Just now he had a
clay pipe in his mouth, its stem little more than an inch long.

"Do you mean to assert that you'd set about these improvements, as you
call them, were you to come again into Verner's Pride?" asked he of
Lionel.

"I believe I should. I would say unhesitatingly that I should, save for
past experience,