s he never associated with any
gentry higher than himself, his opinion was not disturbed by comparison.

He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, "What, sir!
haven't _you_ had your breakfast yet?" but there was no pleasant
morning greeting between them; not because of any unfriendliness, but
because the sweet flower of courtesy is not a growth of such homes as
the Red House.

"Yes, sir," said Godfrey, "I've had my breakfast, but I was waiting to
speak to you."

"Ah! well," said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently into his
chair, and speaking in a ponderous coughing fashion, which was felt in
Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, while he cut a piece of
beef, and held it up before the deer-hound that had come in with him.
"Ring the bell for my ale, will you? You youngsters' business is your
own pleasure, mostly. There's no hurry about it for anybody but
yourselves."

The Squire's life was quite as idle as his sons', but it was a fiction
kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe that youth was
exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged wisdom was
constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey
waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been brought and the
door closed--an interval during which Fleet, the deer-hound, had
consumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man's holiday dinner.

"There's been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire," he began;
"happened the day before yesterday."

"What! broke his knees?" said the Squire, after taking a draught of
ale. "I thought you knew how to ride better than that, sir. I never
threw a horse down in my life. If I had, I might ha' whistled for
another, for _my_ father wasn't quite so ready to unstring as some
other fathers I know of. But they must turn over a new leaf--_they_
must. What with mortgages and arrears, I'm as short o' cash as a
roadside pauper. And that fool Kimble says the newspaper's talking
about peace. Why, the country wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Prices
'ud run down like a jack, and I should never get my arrears, not if I
sold all the fellows up. And there's that damned Fowler, I won't put
up with him any longer; I've told Winthrop to go to Cox this very day.
The lying scoundrel told me he'd be sure to pay me a hundred last
month. He takes advantage because he's on that outlying farm, and
thinks I shall forget him."

The Squire had delivered this speech in a co