gave way to Sir Peter; households so managed go on regularly. The
exception to their connubial happiness was, after all, but of a
negative description. Their affection was such that they sighed for a
pledge of it; fourteen years had he and Lady Chillingly remained
unvisited by the little stranger.

Now, in default of male issue, Sir Peter's estates passed to a distant
cousin as heir-at-law; and during the last four years this heir-at-law
had evinced his belief that practically speaking he was already
heir-apparent; and (though Sir Peter was a much younger man than
himself, and as healthy as any man well can be) had made his
expectations of a speedy succession unpleasantly conspicuous. He had
refused his consent to a small exchange of lands with a neighbouring
squire, by which Sir Peter would have obtained some good arable land,
for an outlying unprofitable wood that produced nothing but fagots and
rabbits, with the blunt declaration that he, the heir-at-law, was fond
of rabbit-shooting, and that the wood would be convenient to him next
season if he came into the property by that time, which he very
possibly might. He disputed Sir Peter's right to make his customary
fall of timber, and had even threatened him with a bill in Chancery on
that subject. In short, this heir-at-law was exactly one of those
persons to spite whom a landed proprietor would, if single, marry at
the age of eighty in the hope of a family.

Nor was it only on account of his very natural wish to frustrate the
expectations of this unamiable relation that Sir Peter Chillingly
lamented the absence of the little stranger. Although belonging to
that class of country gentlemen to whom certain political reasoners
deny the intelligence vouchsafed to other members of the community,
Sir Peter was not without a considerable degree of book-learning and a