he tenant's dinner, Mr. Alwynn mused
thereon, and I believe, if the truth were known, he was sorry that Dare
had been refused. He was a little before his time, and he stopped on the
bridge, and looked at the river, as it came churning and sweeping below,
fretted out of its usual calm by the mill above. I think that as he
leaned over the low stone parapet he made many quiet little reflections
besides the involuntary one of himself in the water below. He would have
liked (he was conscious that it was selfish, but yet he _would_ have
liked) to have Ruth near him always. He would have liked to see this
strange son of his old friend in good hands, that would lead him--as it
is popularly supposed a woman's hand sometimes can--in the way of all
others in which Mr. Alwynn was anxious that he should walk; a way in
which he sometimes feared that Dare had not made any great progress as
yet. Mr. Alwynn felt at times, when conversing with him, that Dare's
life could not have been one in which the nobler feelings of his nature
had been much brought into play, so crude and unformed were his ideas of
principle and responsibility, so slack and easy-going his views of life.

But if Mr. Alwynn felt an occasional twinge of anxiety and misgiving
about his young friend, it speedily turned to self-upbraiding for
indulging in a cynical, unworthy spirit, which was ever ready to seek
out the evil and overlook the good; and he gradually convinced himself
that only favorable circumstances were required for the blossoming forth
of those noble attributes, of which the faintest indications on Dare's
part were speedily magnified by the powerful lens of Mr. Alwynn's
charity to an extent which would have filled Dare with satisfaction, and
would have overwhelmed a more humble nature with shame.

And Ruth would not have him! Mr. Alwynn remembered a certain passage in
his own youth, a long time ago, when somebody (a very foolish somebody,
I think) would not have him either; and it was with that remembrance
still in his mind that he met Dare, who had come as far as the lodge
gates to meet him, and whose forlorn appearance touched Mr. Alwynn's
heart the moment he saw him.

There was not time for much conversation. To his astonishment Mr. Alwynn
found Dare actually nervous about the coming ordeal; and on the way to
the Green Dragon, where the dinner was to be given, he reassured him as
best he could, and suggested the kind of answer he should make when his