ith the loan of 1874, and the money raised in the
severance of the entail with both, in a way which would have driven
anybody except George, who was used to this sort of thing, perfectly
mad. However he sat it through, and when at last the account was
finished, remarked that things "sartainly did look queer."

Thereupon the Squire called him a stupid owl, and having by means of
some test questions discovered that he knew very little of the details
which had just been explained to him at such portentous length, in
spite of the protest of the wretched George, who urged that they
"didn't seem to be gitting no forrader somehow," he began and went
through every word of it again.

This brought them to breakfast time, and after breakfast, George's
accounts were thoroughly gone into, with the result that confusion was
soon worse confounded, for either George could not keep accounts or
the Squire could not follow them. Ida, sitting in the drawing-room,
could occasionally hear her father's ejaculatory outbursts after this
kind:

"Why, you stupid donkey, you've added it up all wrong, it's nine
hundred and fifty, not three hundred and fifty;" followed by a "No,
no, Squire, you be a-looking on the wrong side--them there is the
dibits," and so on till both parties were fairly played out, and the
only thing that remained clear was that the balance was considerably
on the wrong side.

"Well," said the Squire at last, "there you are, you see. It appears
to me that I am absolutely ruined, and upon my word I believe that it
is a great deal owing to your stupidity. You have muddled and muddled
and muddled till at last you have muddled us out of house and home."

"No, no, Squire, don't say that--don't you say that. It ain't none of
my doing, for I've been a good sarvant to you if I haven't had much
book larning. It's that there dratted borrowing, that's what it is,
and the interest and all the rest on it, and though I says it as
didn't ought, poor Mr. James, God rest him and his free-handed ways.
Don't you say it's me, Squire."

"Well, well," answered his master, "it doesn't much matter whose fault
it is, the result is the same, George; I'm ruined, and I suppose that
the place will be sold if anybody can be found to buy it. The de la
Molles have been here between four and five centuries, and they got it
by marriage with the Boisseys, who got it from the Norman kings, and
now it will go to the hammer and be bought by a picture dealer,