Page:Framley Parsonage.djvu/506

500

bailiffs on that day had their meals regular, and their beer, which state of things, together with an absence of all duty in the way of making inventories and the like, I take to be the earthly paradise of bailiffs; and on the next morning they walked off with civil speeches and many apologies as to their intrusion. "They was very sorry," they said, "to have troubled a gen'leman as were a gen'leman, but in their way of business what could they do?" To which one of them added a remark that "business is business." This statement I am not prepared to contradict; but I would recommend all men, in choosing a profession, to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn—either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right. Each younger male reader may perhaps reply that he has no thought of becoming a sheriff's officer; but then are there not other cognate lines of life to which perhaps the attention of some such may be attracted?

On the evening of the day on which they went Mark received a note from Lady Lufton begging him to call early on the following morning, and immediately after breakfast he went across to Framley Court. It may be imagined that he was not in a very happy frame of mind, but he felt the truth of his wife's remark that the first plunge into cold water was always the worst. Lady Lufton was not a woman who would continually throw his disgrace into his teeth, however terribly cold might be the first words with which she spoke of it. He strove hard as he entered her room to carry his usual look and bearing, and to put out his hand to greet her with his customary freedom, but he knew that he failed. And it may be said that no good man who has broken down in his goodness can carry the disgrace of his fall without some look of shame. When a man is able to do that, he ceases to be in any way good.

"This has been a distressing affair," said Lady Lufton, after her first salutation.