Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/37

Rh was one which had belonged to her grandmother.

"Nay; I honor and admire her for helping her father," said the lieutenant, hastily. "I did but grieve that a young lady of so much spirit should take so wrong-headed a view of the matter."

"Your consideration is wasted upon her, sir, indeed," said Mrs. Waldron. "But hush! here comes her father with the squire."

There was no possibility of mistaking the loud, deep, cheery voice of Parson Langney, which could be heard even above the barking of the hounds, which was the first greeting given to every visitor. The next moment the door opened, and Parson Langney, the squire, and his son Bertram, entered, to be joined a few minutes later by a couple of country gentlemen more clownish than their host.

Bertram Waldron was an unhappy cross between the country breeding of his father and the town airs and graces of the ladies. For while he affected the modish cut of the town in his clothes, swore the latest oaths, and swaggered about with a great assumption of the manners of the beau, his rusticity peeped