ied and in the bride's train came General Grantly
with all the patience and enthusiasm and friendly anecdotal powers of
your true angler; and in his train came like-minded brother officers to
whom, it must be conceded, Hilary Ffolliot was always ready to offer
hospitality.

Things livened up a bit at Redmarley, and Willets decided to stay a
little longer.

Margery Ffolliot liked the Willets and was passionately sorry for them
about the little girls; but it was the Ffolliot children who wove about
Willets an unbreakable charm, binding him to his native village.

One by one, with toddling steps and high, clear voices, they stormed
the little house by the bridge and took its owners captive.

Saving only their mother, Willets had a good deal more to do with the
upbringing of the young Ffolliots in their earliest years than anybody
else. Singly and collectively, they adored him, tyrannised over him,
copied him, learnt from him, and wasted his time with a prodigality a
more sporting master than the Squire might have resented seriously.

Thus it fell out that offers came to Willets, good offers from places
far more important than Redmarley, where there were possibilities both
in the way of sport and of tips--there was a sad scarcity of tips at
Redmarley--and yet he passed them by.

Sometimes his wife would be a little reproachful, pointing out that
they were saving nothing and he was throwing away good money.

Willets had always some excellent reason for not leaving just then.

Redmarley had possibilities; it would be a nice place by the time
Master Grantly was grown up and brought his friends. No one else would
take quite the same interest in it that he did; he was proud of the
children, and money wasn't everything, and so Willets stayed on.

With the arrival of the Kitten his subjugation was completed, and a
seal was set upon the permanence of his relations with the Manor House.
From the days when the Kitten in a white bonnet and woolly gaiters
would struggle out of her nurse's arms to be taken by Willets, sitting
on his knee and gazing at him with wine-coloured bright eyes not unlike
his own, occasionally putting up a small hand encased in an absurd
fingerless glove to turn his face that she might see it better, Willets
was her infatuated and abject slave. When on these occasions he
attempted to restore her to her nurse she would clutch him fiercely and
scream, so that it ended in his carrying her up to the hous