i8 THE HAUGHTYSHIRE HUNT. 



Mrs. Septimus, with more eagerness evident in her tone than 

 she had meant to show. " Will you now, Mr. Yarboro '? That 

 would be friendly of you. I suppose he — the Doolv, I mean — 

 I suppose he speaks to you when he meets you out ? — bound 

 to, though, as the parish clergyman." 



" Yes. He always speaks to me when he sees me," smiled 

 the visitor, as he rose to go. " And one of these days I'll take 

 an opportunity of introducing your son to him. Good-day ; I 

 hope we shall meet again before long." And so saying, he 

 bowed himself out of the room, without having even been 

 introduced to poor Penelope, who had sat in silence through 

 the interview. Had Mrs. Binkie known that the Eeverend 

 Geoffry Yarboro was the Duke's nephew, she might not have 

 taken so much satisfaction to her heart as she did in saying to 

 her lord and master — 



" Sep, I think we did well in offering to have him here to 

 dinner, and show him the pictures and the furniture. It'll be a 

 treat for him. These Parsons don't, as a rule, fare very well, 

 and I expect a good dinner'll make him very friendly to us. 

 They always speak well of the people they can get good meat 

 and drink out of, you may be sure. And the Dook, you see, 

 speaks to him when he sees him, although he is only a Parson. 

 That boy of ours must buy his hunting horse at once, and go 

 out with His Grace's pack. And the next thing for us to do, 

 after that, will be to give what Sir Thomas Fitzsquander calls 

 a hunt breakfast. Nothin' like that, he says, for making us 

 pop'lar in the county." 



But as ' Sep ' was by this time comfortably asleep, Mrs, 

 Binkie's last few words were wasted on the empty air. 



