ley do that?"

"Oh, no--Madeline is not good at a five-barred gate, and would make
but a very bad hand at a double ditch. If you are inclined to remain
among the tame people, she will be true to your side."

"I shall certainly be one of the tame people, Mr. Staveley."

"I rather think I shall be with you myself; I have only one horse
that will jump well, and Graham will ride him. By-the-by, Miss
Furnival, what do you think of my friend Graham?"

"Think of him! Am I bound to have thought anything about him by this
time?"

"Of course you are;--or at any rate of course you have. I have
no doubt that you have composed in your own mind an essay on the
character of everybody here. People who think at all always do."

"Do they? My essay upon him then is a very short one."

"But perhaps not the less correct on that account. You must allow me
to read it."

"Like all my other essays of that kind, Mr. Staveley, it has been
composed solely for my own use, and will be kept quite private."

"I am so sorry for that, for I intended to propose a bargain to you.
If you would have shown me some of your essays, I would have been
equally liberal with some of mine." And in this way, before the
evening was over, Augustus Staveley and Miss Furnival became very
good friends.

"Upon my word she is a very clever girl," he said afterwards, as
young Orme and Graham were sitting with him in an outside room which
had been fitted up for smoking.

"And uncommonly handsome," said Peregrine.

"And they say she'll have lots of money," said Graham. "After all,
Staveley, perhaps you could not do better."

"She's not my style at all," said he. "But of course a man is obliged
to be civil to girls in his own house." And then they all went to
bed.

CHAPTER XX

MR. DOCKWRATH IN HIS OWN OFFICE

In the conversation which had taken place after dinner at Noningsby
with regard to the Masons Peregrine Orme took no part, but his
silence had not arisen from any want of interest on the subject.
He had been over to Hamworth that day on a very special mission
regarding it, and as he was not inclined to speak of what he had then
seen and done, he held his tongue altogether.

"I want you to do me a great favour," Lucius had said to him, when
the two were together in the breakfast-parlour at Noningsby; "but I
am afraid it will give you some trouble."

"I sha'n't mind that," said Peregrine, "if that's all."

"You have heard of this row about J