"
"The squire!" Mr. Masters nodded his head three times. "You don't
say so. Well, Mr. Masters, I don't begrudge it you. He might do
worse. She has taken her pigs well to market at last!"
"He is to come to me at four this afternoon."
"Well done, Miss Mary! I suppose it's been going on ever so long?"
"We fathers and mothers," said the attorney, "never really know
what the young ones are after. Don't mention it just at present,
Runciman. You are such an old friend that I couldn't help telling
you."
"Poor Larry!"
"I can have the pony, Runciman?"
"Certainly you can, Mr. Masters. Tell him to come in and talk it
all over with me. If we don't look to it he'll be taking to drink
regular." At that last meeting at the club, when the late squire's
will was discussed, at which, as the reader may perhaps remember, a
little supper was also discussed in honour of the occasion, poor
Larry had not only been present, but had drunk so pottle-deep that
the landlord had been obliged to put him to bed at the inn, and he
had not been at all as he ought to have been after Lord Rufford's
dinner. Such delinquencies were quite outside the young man's
accustomed way of his life. It had been one of his recognised
virtues that, living as he did a good deal among sporting men and
with a full command of means, he had never drank.
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