“We’ll hev thy cap, squire,” said Israel. “The man who proposes a cap collection salts his awn cap with his awn money first.” And the squire laughed good-humoredly, lifted his cap, and in their sight dropped five gold sovereigns into it. Then Dick offered his hat to his father, saying he had his opera hat in his pocket and the two happy men went away together, just as some musical genius had fitted Byron’s three lines to a Methodist long-metre, so they were followed by little groups straying off in different directions, and all singing,
Dick did not enter the Clarendon with his father. He knew that he might be a little superfluous. The squire had a certain childlike egotism which delighted in praising himself, and in telling his own story; and Annie was audience sufficient. If she approved, there was no more to be desired, the third person was often in the way. In addition to this wish to give the squire the full measure of his success, Dick was longing passionately to be with his love and his hopes. The squire would not speak of Faith, and Dick wanted to talk about her. Her name beat upon his lips, and oh, how he longed to see her! To draw her to his side, to touch her hair, her eyes, her lips! He told himself that the promise of silence until the Bill was passed, or thrown out was a great wrong, that he never ought to have made it, that his father never ought to have asked for it. He wondered how he was to get the time over; the gayeties of London had disappeared, the Leylands thought it prudent to live quietly, his mother and Katherine were tired of the city, and longed to be at home; and Harry, whose sympathy he had always relied on, was somewhere in Norfolk, and had not even taken the trouble to write and tell him the reason for his visit, to such a tame, bucolic county.
Yet with the hope of frequent letters, and his own cheerful optimistic temper, he managed to reach the thirtieth of May. On that morning he took breakfast with his parents, and the squire said in a positive voice that he was “sure the Bill would pass the House of Lords before May became June; and if you remember the events since the seventh of April, Dick, you will also be sure.”
“But I do not remember much about public affairs during that time, father. I was in Annis, and here and there, and in every place it was confusion and anger and threats. I really do not remember them.”