"Much what your son said in sharper words. Well, you'm out o' reckoning
for once, wise though you be most times; for if a maiden's happiness
doan't rest with her faither, blamed if I see wheer it should. And to
think such a man as me doan't knaw wiser 'n two childern who caan't
number forty year between 'em is flat fulishness, surely?"

"I knaw Will," said Mrs. Blanchard, slowly and emphatically; "I knaw un
to the core, and that's to say more than you or anybody else can. A
mother may read her son like print, but no faither can see to the bottom
of a wife-old daughter--not if he was Solomon's self. So us'll wait an'
watch wi'out being worse friends."

She went home again the happier for her conversation; but any thought
that Mr. Lyddon might have been disposed to devote to her prophecy was
for the time banished by the advent of John Grimbal and his brother.

Like boys home from school, they dwelt in the present delight of their
return, and postponed the varied duties awaiting them, to revel again in
the old sights, sounds, and scents. To-day they were about an angling
excursion, and the fishers' road to Fingle lying through Monks Barton,
both brothers stopped a while and waited upon their old friend of the
mill, according to John's promise of the previous afternoon. Martin
carried the creel and the ample luncheon it contained; John smoked a
strong cigar and was only encumbered with his light fly-rod; the younger
designed to accompany his brother through Fingle Valley; then leave him
there, about his sport, and proceed alone to various places of natural
and antiquarian interest. But John meant fishing and nothing else. To
him great woods were no more than cover for fur and feathers; rivers and
streams meant a vehicle for the display of a fly to trout, and only