Page:Lolly Willowes - 1926.djvu/18

 of smallpox within a fortnight of each other. As a young man Henry had shown a roving and untraditional temperament, so it was fortunate that he had the licence of a cadet to go his own way. He had taken advantage of this freedom to marry a Welsh lady, and to settle near Yeovil, where his father bought him a partnership in a brewery. It was natural to expect that upon becoming the head of the family Henry would abandon, if not the Welsh wife and the brewery, at least Somerset, and return to his native people. But this he would not do. He had become attached to the neighbourhood where he had spent the first years of his married life; the ill-considered jest of his uncle the Admiral, that Henry was courting a Welsh-woman with a tall hat like Mother Shipton's who would carry her shoes to church, had secretly estranged him from his relations; and— most weighty reason of all—Lady Place, a small solid mansion, which he had long coveted —saying to himself that if ever he were rich enough he would make his wife the mistress of it—just then came into the market. The Willowes obstinacy, which had for so long kept unchanged the home of Dorset, was now to transfer that home across the county border.