Why! I have known him bolt into a copse because he saw something
fifteen yards off--some plant, maybe, which he would tell me was very
rare, though I should say I'd seen its marrow at every turn in the
woods; and, if we came upon such a thing as this,' touching a delicate
film of a cobweb upon a leaf with his stick, as he spoke, 'why, he
could tell you what insect or spider made it, and if it lived in rotten
fir-wood, or in a cranny of good sound timber, or deep down in the
ground, or up in the sky, or anywhere. It is a pity they don't take
honours in Natural History at Cambridge. Roger would be safe enough if
they did.'

'Mr. Osborne Hamley is very clever, is he not?' Molly asked, timidly.

'Oh, yes. Osborne's a bit of a genius. His mother looks for great
things from Osborne. I'm rather proud of him myself. He'll get a
Trinity fellowship, if they play him fair. As I was saying at the
magistrates' meeting yesterday, "I've got a son who will make a noise
at Cambridge, or I'm very much mistaken." Now, is it not a queer quip
of Nature,' continued the squire, turning his honest face towards
Molly, as if he was going to impart a new idea to her, 'that I, a
Hamley of Hamley, straight in descent from nobody knows when--the
Heptarchy, they say--What's the date of the Heptarchy?'

'I don't know,' said Molly, startled at being thus appealed to.

'Well! it was some time before King Alfred, because he was the King of
all England, you know; but, as I was saying, here am I, of as good and
as old a descent as any man in England, and I doubt if a stranger to
look at me, would take me for a gentleman, with my red face, great
hands and feet, and thick figure, fourteen stone, and never less than