ke'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.'

'They snubbed you.'

'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.'

'I am not so sure. Some people doom themselves to an infinity of
annoyance because they won't avoid the society of disagreeable people. I
don't know that I have ever quarrelled with any one. I have never
intended to do so. But when I find that a man or woman is not
sympathetic I think it better to keep out of the way.' That was the
squire's account of himself. Those who knew him in the neighbourhood
were accustomed to say that he had quarrelled with everybody about him.

In December the baby was born, just twelve months after the marriage,
and there was great demonstrations of joy, and ringing of bells in the
parishes of Utterden and Netherden. The baby was a boy, and all was as
it ought to be. John Caldigate himself, when he came to look at his
position and to understand the feeling of those around him, was
astonished to find how strong was the feeling in his own favour, and how
thoroughly the tenants had been outraged by the idea that the property
might be made over to a more distant member of the family. What was it
to them who lived in the house at Folking? Why should they have been
solicitous in the matter? They had their leases, and there was no
adequate reason for supposing that one Caldigate would be more pleasant
in his dealing with them than another. And yet it was evident to him now
that this birth of a real heir at the squire's house, with a fair
prospect that the acres would descend in a right line, was regarded by
them all with almost superstitious satisfaction. The bells were rung as
though the church-towers were going to be pulled down, and there was not
a farmer or a farmer's wife who did not come to the door of Folking to
ask how the young mother and the baby were doing.

'This is as it should be, squoire,' said Ralph Holt, who was going about
in his Sunday clothes, as though it was a day muc