'Of course you think so, John. That's natural enough. Perhaps I think so too. But what has that to do with it?'
'It's rather unfortunate that I know so much about Mr. Smirkie. He is fifty years old, and has five children by his former wife.'
'I don't see why he shouldn't be a good husband for all that.'
'And Plum-cum-Pippins is less than _£300_ a-year. Poor dear Julia!'
'Well; yes. Look at the way she has underscored it. Of course I'm jealous.' Nevertheless he wrote a courteous answer promising to go over and shoot the coverts, and stay for one night.
He did go over and shoot the coverts, and stayed for one night; but the visit was not very successful. Aunt Polly would talk of the glories of the Plum-cum-Pippins rectory in a manner which implied that dear Julia's escape from a fate which once threatened her had been quite providential. When he alluded,--as he did, but should not have done,--to the young Smirkies, she spoke with almost ecstatic enthusiasm of the 'dear children,' Caldigate knowing the while that the eldest child must be at least sixteen. And then, though Aunt Polly was kind to him, she was kind in an almost insulting manner,--as though he were to be received for the sake of auld lang syne in spite of the step he had taken downwards in the world. He did his best to bear all this with no more than an inward smile, telling himself that it behoved him as a man to allow her to have her little revenge. But the smile was seen, and the more that was seen of it, the more often was he reminded that he had lost that place in the Babington elysium which might have been his, had he not been too foolish to know what was good for him. And a hint was given that the Boltons a short time since had not been aristocratic, whereas it was proved to him from Burke's Landed Gentry that the Smirkies had been established in Suffolk ever since Cromwell's time. No doubt their land had gone, but still there had been Smirkies.
'How did you get on with them?' his father asked, as he passed home through Cambridge.
'Much the same as usual. Of course in such a family a son-in-law elect is more thought of than a useless married man.'
'Aunt Polly snubbed me a little, and I don't think I had quite so good a place for the shooting as in the old days. But all that was to be expected. I quite agree with Aunt Polly that family quarrels are foolish things.'