"Why don't you marry yourself, Jabez? You, all alone i' th' old homestead, with nobody but old Betty to look after you! Dreadful lonesome you must be. Th' house is none too cheerful at th' best o' times. But a woman's pretty face, an' a soft voice, an' th' patter o' little feet 'll lighten it up if now't else will. And tak' advice, Jabez, look further afield, not among th' Wrigleys, an' Wimpennys, an' th' Brookes. Their lasses are weel enough, an' there's money with all on 'em. But they run too much to bone, an' they've been chapelled, an' missionarized, an' dragooned till religion 's soured on 'em, an' when they love they love by rule o' three."
But Jabez had winced, and changed the subject.
After his wife's death Dick had gradually fallen back into his old courses. He loved his little wench, as he called his daughter, passionately; but a full-blooded, hearty man, still in the very pink and flower of his manhood, one used all his life to the bustle of the market, the free and easy ways of an inn and the sports of the field is not very much at home in a nursery. So Dick, who had felt, when the cruel blow fell, that life had nothing left for him was once more to be seen o' nights at the _Rose and Crown_, roaring out a hunting song, or arranging the details of a coursing match, a pigeon shooting, or a cock fight--and the maidens of the valley of the Holme took heart once more, and began to feel a lively concern for the poor orphaned babe in the lonely house. They forgave Dick--handsome, rollicking Dick--his passing aberration, his one overt act of treason to their charms, and reflected, with satisfaction, that his married life had been so brief, it might be considered as not counting at all--an episode, not a history.
But the rising hopes of these speculative spinsters were rudely dashed. One bright winter's morning, when a sudden thaw had softened the iron fields and promised the scent would lie, Dick rode forth cheerily on his hunter to the meet at Thongsbridge. There was a substantial breakfast at Mr. Hinchliffe's a brother manufacturer and a county magistrate. Dick did ample justice to the cold beef and ham but declined coffee for old October. Then he must needs drain a stiff glass of brandy and water "to warm the old ale," he said; and in very merry mood was Dick when the hounds broke covert. Now save the stone walls of Galway there are no worse fences than those of the Valley of the Holme. You must clear them at the peril of your neck. There is no crashing through a dry-walling,--a "topping" _may_ give once in a way; but it is odds that it wont. Dick--Dare-devil Dick they called him in the hunting-field,--rode straight. The ground in the higher reaches had not yielded to the thaw or the morning sun. His horse baulked at an awkward fence, slipped, and failed to recover itself, and before Dick could disengage boot from stirrup, fell upon its side, with Dick crushed beneath. The broken ribs were pressed into the lungs, and though he lingered a few days at Mr. Hinchliffe's house, he was borne from it a corpse.