e can tell as he's a real gentleman. All the same, I'll be
uncommon glad when he's with his own folk again; no one'd believe the
weight it's been on my mind to see as he didn't fall ill with us. And
you always a-telling me as squire said he wasn't to be coddled and
cosseted. Yet you'd have been none so pleased if he'd got a chill and
the rheumatics or worse, as might have been if I hadn't myself seen to
his bed and his sheets and his blankets, till the weight of them on my
mind's been almost more nor I could bear."

"Well, well," said the farmer, soothingly, "all's well as ends well. And
you said yourself it'd never 'a' done for us to refuse the squire any
mortal service he could have asked of us."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE NEW SQUIRE AND HIS FAMILY.

Tuesday brought no letter for Geoff--nor Wednesday, nor even Thursday.
His spirits went down again, and he felt bitterly disappointed. Could
his friend, the guard, have forgotten to post the letter, after all? he
asked himself. This thought kept him up till Thursday evening, when,
happening to see the same man at the station, the guard's first words
were, "Got any answer to your love-letter yet, eh, Jim? I posted it
straight away," and then Geoff did not know what to think.

He did not like to write again. He began to fear that Vicky had been
mistaken in feeling so sure that his mother and Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot
and Elsa and Frances were all ready to forgive him, and longing for his
return. Perhaps they were all still too indignant with him to allow
Vicky to write, and he sighed deeply at the thought.

"I will wait till I can ask for a holiday," he said to himself, "and
then I will write and say I am coming, and if they won't see me I must
just bear it. At least, I am sure mother will see me when the time comes
for me to go to America, though it will be dreadful to have to wait till
then."

When he got back to the house that evening, the farmer called to him.
_He_ had had a letter that morning, though Geoff had not; and had it not
been getting dusk, the boy would have seen a slight twinkle in the good
man's eyes as he spoke to him.

"Jim, my boy," he said, "I shall want you to do an odd job or so of work
the next day or two. The new squire's coming down on Monday to look
round a bit. They've been tidying up at the house; did you know?"

Geoff shook his head; he had no time for strolling about the Hall
grounds except on Sundays