can remain silent for six
months," said Lady Julia.

"Bless my soul! somebody else will have picked her up before that,"
said the earl.

In answer to this Lady Julia merely shook her head.

Johnny went over to his mother on Christmas Day after church, and was
received by her and by his sister with great honour. And she gave
him many injunctions as to his behaviour at the earl's table, even
descending to small details about his boots and linen. But Johnny had
already begun to feel at the Manor that, after all, people are not so
very different in their ways of life as they are supposed to be. Lady
Julia's manners were certainly not quite those of Mrs Roper; but she
made the tea very much in the way in which it was made at Burton
Crescent, and Eames found that he could eat his egg, at any rate on
the second morning, without any tremor in his hand, in spite of the
coronet on the silver egg-cup. He did feel himself to be rather out
of his place in the Manor pew on the Sunday, conceiving that all the
congregation was looking at him; but he got over this on Christmas
Day, and sat quite comfortably in his soft corner during the sermon,
almost going to sleep. And when he walked with the earl after church
to the gate over which the noble peer had climbed in his agony, and
inspected the hedge through which he had thrown himself, he was quite
at home with his little jokes, bantering his august companion as to
the mode of his somersault. But be it always remembered that there
are two modes in which a young man may be free and easy with his
elder and superior,--the mode pleasant and the mode offensive. Had it
been in Johnny's nature to try the latter, the earl's back would soon
have been up, and the play would have been over. But it was not in
Johnny's nature to do so, and therefore it was that the earl liked
him.

At last came the hour of dinner on Tuesday, or at least the hour at
which the squire had been asked to show himself at the Manor House.
Eames, as by agreement with his patron, did not come down so as to
show himself till after the interview. Lady Julia, who had been
present at their discussions, had agreed to receive the squire; and
then a servant was to ask him to step into the earl's own room. It
was pretty to see the way in which the three conspired together,
planning and plotting with an eagerness that was beautifully green
and fresh.

"He can be as cross as an old stick when he likes it," said the earl,
speaki