to use when he's
got the better of a young lady's affections; and I dare say they're the
very words as put the captain into such a towering passion. I can
understand how it happened, just as if I saw it."

"But he went away, and left him bleeding and speechless."

"He'd knocked his _weni, widi, wici_ out of him, I guess! I think, Mr.
Prosper, you should forgive him." Mr. Prosper had thought so too, but
had hardly known how to express himself after his second burst of anger.
But he was at the present ill and weak, and was anxious to have some one
near to him who should be more like a silk purse than his butler,
Matthew. "Suppose you was to send for him, sir."

"He wouldn't come."

"Let him alone for coming! They tell me, sir--"

"Who tells you?"

"Why, sir, the servants now at the rectory. Of course, sir, where two
families is so near connected, the servants are just as near: it's no
more than natural. They tell me now that since you were so kind about
the allowance, their talk of you is all changed." Then the squire's
anger was heated hot again. Their talk had all been against him till he
had opened his hand in regard to the allowance. And now when there was
something again to be got they could be civil. There was none of that
love of him for himself for which an old man is always hankering,--for
which the sick man breaks his heart,--but which the old and sick find it
so difficult to get from the young and healthy. It is in nature that the
old man should keep the purse in his own pocket, or otherwise he will
have so little to attract. He is weak, querulous, ugly to look at, apt
to be greedy, cross, and untidy. Though he himself can love, what is his
love to any one? Duty demands that one shall smooth his pillow, and some
one does smooth it,--as a duty. But the old man feels the difference, and
remembers the time when there was one who was anxious to share it.

Mr. Prosper was not in years an old man, and had not as yet passed that
time of life at which many a man is regarded by his children as the best
of their playfellows. But he was weak in body, self-conscious, and
jealous in spirit. He had the heart to lay out for himself a generous
line of conduct, but not the purpose to stick to it steadily. His nephew
had ever been a trouble to him, because he had expected from his nephew
a kind of worship to which he had felt that he was entitled as the head
of the family. All good things were to come from him, and there