Page:Between Two Loves.djvu/28

Rh training, Jonathan. You can't make a good wife by putting a gold ring on her finger, any more than you can make a good joiner by buying him a box of tools."

"I'd speak about something I understood, if I was thee, Ben Holden. Women are a bit beyond thee."

Jonathan was standing by his harnessed gig as he talked, and as soon as he had given his friend this bit of advice, he drove out of the big gates and took the straight road to his home. There were few rich men in the county who had a more beautiful home. Burley House was no spick-and-span new dwelling, gorgeous with paint and gilding and gay upholstery. It was a fine pile of solid stone, that had been a favorite residence of the Somers family for centuries. It stood in the midst of a wooded park, and before it was a fair, old-fashioned garden, smelling of all the scents of Paradise. When Jonathan bought the place, people expected that he would be proud to continue the old name, and to call himself Burley of Somers Court. But he had rather resented the expectation. "It is not Somers Court now," he said, "it belongs to me, and it is Burley House for the future. The