Rising full of anxious thoughts of the excitement which must have taken possession of Ben from the revelations of the night, Mary was much taken aback to meet her cousin, in, to all appearance, an extremely cheerful state of mind, next morning. He had been up early, and had taken a long walk, and renewed,—he told her,—his acquaintance with the country. ‘If one had it in one’s own hands one could do a great deal more with it than has been done yet,’ he said, looking more like the portraits of the old Rentons than Mary liked to see.

‘I am sure I hope nobody will ever try to improve it as long as I am here,’ she said, with a little heat,—for Renton as a parish, and Berks as a county, were to Mary the perfection of the earth.

‘You don’t like stagnant ponds, I hope,’ said Ben, laughing at her vehemence,—‘nor cottages falling to pieces,—nor fields that are flooded with every heavy rain.’

‘But I like the broad turf on the roadsides, and{v.3-155} the old hedges, and the old trees,’ said Mary, ‘and everything one has been used to all one’s life. Ah, Ben, whatever you do, don’t spoil Renton! I should break my heart——’

‘Probably I shall never have it in my power to spoil Renton,’ he said, with a short sigh of impatience. ‘I wish I had not come home until the very day fixed for this reading of the will. It is hard work hanging about here and kicking one’s heels and waiting. My father was very hard upon us, Mary. It was too much to ask from any set of men.’

‘I don’t think it has done you much harm,’ said Mary, whose natural impulse was to defend the ancient authorities, however much she might sympathise with the sufferers in her heart.

‘Don’t you?’ said Ben, walking away from the breakfast-table to the window, where he stood drawing up and down the blind with preoccupied looks. After a few minutes she, too, moved and went up to him. Her mind was full of anxiety to say something,—to give him to understand that she could enter into his feelings; but it was so difficult to enter upon such a subject with a man, and especially with such a man as Ben.

‘Ben, I think I know,—a little,—what you mean,’ she said, faltering; ‘and I can see how, in some things, it must have been very hard,—preventing you from,—often,—doing what you wished; but {v.3-156}now that is over. You need not wait now——’

He turned round and looked at her with some surprise in his eyes. ‘You don’t know what you are saying, Mary,’ he said. ‘I am like most men, very glad now to have been prevented doing things which at one time I would fain have done. And you are right, too,—I am my own master now,—not because the will is to be read this day week, but because I have found a trade and can work at it;—but that was not what I meant.’

Mary sat down patiently and raised her eyes to him that he might tell her what he did mean. She was in the way of listening to a great many explanations, and thought them natural. Ben, for his part, stood and looked at her for a minute, and then turned away with a laugh.

‘Poor Mary!’ he said. ‘What wearisome talk you must have listened to all these years,—going into everything! You must have a special faculty for that sort of thing, you women; how have you managed to live through it all and keep your youth and your bloom?’

‘There has been nothing dreadful to live through,’ said Mary; ‘but as for the youth, I don’t pretend to that any longer. It is gone, like so many other pretty things; and I am not thinking of myself.’

‘Not now, nor ever,’ said her cousin; ‘but I don’t feel disposed to give up the matter as you do. I don’t feel very aged——’

‘But you are a man,’ said Mary, interrupting{v.3-157} him, ‘which makes all the difference; and, besides, this sort of talk is quite nonsense. I must go and read the paper with godmamma. Have you done with it?’ And she took the “Times” from the table, and was about to leave the room.

‘I have not done with it,’ said Ben, ‘I have not begun it even. I am going to read it to my mother, and you shall come and listen, if you like. You have done our duty long enough. It is but fair I should take my spell now.’

Mary made a little protestation, but Ben was not disposed to give in. He was ennuyé for one thing, and did not want to be alone and give himself up to troublesome thoughts. There are times when it is better to do even the most humble of domestic duties than to be left to yourself. Mary thought, as she took her work and sat down near the window of her godmother’s room, at some distance from the reader and listener, that affairs were wonderfully changed indeed, and that Ben’s dutifulness was beyond all the traditions of good behaviour she had ever known. Mrs. Renton herself was a little overpowered by so sublime an act. Ben did not read steadily through as Mary did. He read not the bits of news which were her favourite study, but leading articles and speeches, which were not in her way. And then he would pause and talk in the middle of them, often turning his chair round towards Mary, and defrauding his mother both of the paper and his attention.{v.3-158} It was pleasant, no doubt, to have a man in the house, and still more pleasant to have Ben at home; but the great and unexpected condescension of his morning visit to read the papers was not by any means so great a pleasure as it looked. But for the name of the thing she would really have preferred Davison; and Mary’s reading was infinitely more satisfactory. When Ben wound up by saying, as it is the proper formula to say, that there was nothing in it, Mrs. Renton could not but echo the words with a little querulousness in her tone. He threw the paper carelessly on to the bed, and the poor lady drew it towards her, and made a feeble search after her spectacles.

‘Indeed there seems very little,’ she said, ‘much less than on most days; but it was very kind of you to think of coming and reading to me, Ben.’

‘I mean to come ever morning, mother,’ he replied,—at which Mrs. Renton shivered,—‘and relieve Mary a little. By-the-bye, I want to know whether you will mind if I have Hillyard here. I told him he was to come on Saturday, if he did not hear from me to the contrary. He is not quite in your way, but he is a very good fellow. I thought you would not mind if I had him here.’

‘My dear boy, the house is yours,—or at least it will soon be yours,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘It is very nice of you to consult me, and you know I am not very able to receive strangers; but still Mary is{v.3-159} there to do all that is necessary, and of course you must have your friends.’

‘Mother, I should like you to understand that it is not at all of course,’ said Ben. ‘The house is not mine,—I am not calculating that it will ever be mine. I want Hillyard, not so much because he is my friend, as because he is with me in business. He is my right-hand man——’

‘It was Mr. Hillyard you went to America with at first?’ said Mary, from her distant seat.

And Ben, relieved, walked across the room, finding she was easier to talk to than his mother. ‘Eh? Yes, it is the same Hillyard,’ he said, with a laugh which had some pleasure in it. ‘I was his right-hand man then, and now he is mine. That is all the difference; but we have always hung together all the same.’

‘Then you have done better than he has,’ said Mary, looking up at him with a smile.

And Ben came and stood by the side of the table she was working at, and looked down upon her as he spoke. ‘He’s a very good fellow,’ he said, ‘but he does not stick to his work. There are some people who do best to be masters, and some who do best to be subordinate. And when he is not master, poor fellow, he is worth a dozen ordinary men.’

‘When some one else is master?’ said Mary, with natural female gratification.

‘No compliments,’ said Ben. ‘A man needs to{v.3-160} be as hard as iron, and as bold as brass;—though why brass should be the emblem of unpleasant boldness, by the way, I don’t know.’

When there had been as much of it as this, Mrs. Renton began to stir uneasily. ‘I cannot hear what you two are saying,’ she said. ‘You have light enough for your work generally at this window, Mary. Why should you go away so far to-day? And, Ben, I can see there are two or three things here you did not read to me. There is a dreadful burglary somewhere, in a country-house like this. It is dreadful to think we might be killed in our beds any nights,—and gives it such an interest;—and there is a great deal out of “Galignani” in the French article. “Galignani” is always amusing. But Mary will read it to me when you go out.’

‘I was not thinking of going out,—at present, mother. When is Laurie coming? He ought to be here,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t understand how a man can choose to shut himself up in London at this time of the year.’

‘But he is working at something,’ said Mary.

‘He is always working at something, and I don’t know what it is ever to come to. Laurie ought to be the eldest son,—if there is to be an eldest son among us,’ said Ben. ‘I think that would be the best solution. He could muse about his fields, and paint the trees, and make a very good country gentleman,—don’t you think so, Mary?—and marry{v.3-161} and make everybody comfortable;—that is how it ought to be.’

‘Ben,’ said his mother, solemnly, ‘I hope you have not been led astray into Radical principles since you have been away. How could Laurie be the eldest son? Your poor dear papa did everything for the best. He thought it was good for you to wait, and no doubt it must have been good for you. But to speak as if he did not care for your rights! Why, you were called Benedict because you were the eldest son. I said to Mr. Renton, “I hate the name,—it is the ugliest name I know.” But he always said, “My dear, we can’t help ourselves; the Rentons have been Laurence and Benedict for hundreds of years,—and Laurence and Benedict they must continue to be; but you can call him Ben, you know,—or Dick, for that matter.” I had a good cry over it,’ Mrs. Renton said, dropping back fatigued upon her pillows; ‘for, if there is anything I hate, it is those short names like Ben and Dick; but he had his way. And now to think you should talk as if it had been all in vain!’

‘Miss Mary,’ said Davison with decision, ‘my missis has talked a deal more than she ought, and I don’t hold with excitement. If you and Mr. Ben was to go out for a walk now,—or something as would take him off his poor dear mamma,’ said the careful nurse, lowering her voice. Ben was too much for his mother. After seven years of soft,{v.3-162} feminine glidings about her room, softened voices, perpetual consideration of her ailments, this ‘man in the house,’ thought pleasant at first, was too much for her powers. ‘And I don’t know how we’ll ever do when they’re all here,’ the faithful Davison murmured to herself, as she sprinkled eau-de-Cologne about the pillows, and mixed some port with the arrowroot. And Ben was banished forthwith from the room. ‘He is very nice at dinner, my dear,’ Mrs. Renton herself said, ‘but men never understand. And they should always have something to do, Mary. They are never happy without something to do.’

‘But poor Ben, this is his first day at home!’ said Mary, when she had read all about the burglary, and calmed the patient down.

‘But, my dear, they are always wretched themselves,’ said Mrs. Renton, ‘when they are quite unoccupied. You must find him something to do.’

Thus it will be seen that Mary’s labours were not much lightened by the arrival of the eldest son. When she went down-stairs after her newspaper-reading, she found him in the library yawning somewhat over a book. ‘Come and talk,’ he said, setting a chair for her; and then laughed a little over his unsuitableness in the hushed and soft-toned house.

‘It is because you have been so long away,{v.3-163}’ said Mary. ‘You have gone off on one current, and we on another. I suppose it is always so when people are long parted. Is it not sad?’

‘I don’t think that it ought to be so,’ said Ben.

‘And Laurie has his current, too,—quite different. I should like to find out about Laurie. It is he I know least about,’ said Mary, with a little sigh.

And then Ben smiled. ‘I should like to hear,’ he said, ‘what you know about me?’

What did she know about him? Nothing,—and yet everything, Mary thought.

‘Sometimes one divines,’ she said.

‘And sometimes one divines all wrong,’ said Ben.

Then there followed a pause. It was a very exciting game of fence so far as she was concerned. But she felt instinctively it was not safe to keep it up.

‘Godmamma will not come down to luncheon,’ she said, ‘but in the evening I hope she will be all right again. And when Alice is here and the children they will be a great help. Alice is not clever, you know, but she harmonises things somehow. I wonder if it is because she is musical.’

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