the country, to Folking, that he might say so. 'You have not sense
enough to understand the matter,' said Daniel Caldigate. 'You have no
heart in your bowels if you can disinherit an only son,' said the big
squire. 'Never mind where I carry my heart,' said the smaller squire;
'but it is a pity you should carry so small an amount of brain.' No good
could be done by such a meeting as that, nor by the journey which aunt
Polly took to Pollington. The Caldigates, both father and son, were
gifted with too strong a will to be turned from their purpose by such
interference. But a great deal of confusion was occasioned; and aunt
Polly among the Shands was regarded as a very wonderful woman indeed.
'Oh, my son, my darling son!' she said, weeping on John Caldigate's
shoulder. Now John Caldigate was certainly not her son, in the usual
acceptation of the word, nor did Maria Shand believe that he was so
even in that limited sense in which a daughter's husband may be so
designated. It was altogether very disagreeable, and made our hero
almost resolve to get on board the ship a week before it started from
the Thames instead of going down to Plymouth and catching it at the last
moment. Of course it would have been necessary that the Babingtons
should know all about it sooner or later, but John very much regretted
that he had not delayed his letter till the day before his departure.

There is something jovial when you are young in preparing for a long
voyage and for totally altered circumstances in life, especially when
the surroundings are in themselves not melancholy. A mother weeping over
a banished child may be sad enough,--going as an exile when there is no
hope of a return, But here among the Shands, with whom sons and
daughters were plentiful, and with whom the feelings were of a useful
kind, and likely to wear well, rather than of a romantic nature, the
bustle, the purchasings, the arrangements, and the packings generally
had in them a pleasantness of activity with no disagreeable