The end of his cogitations was that ride to Hamley the next morning, when he proposed to allow his daughter to accept Mrs Hamley's last invitation - an invitation that had been declined at the time.'You may quote against me the proverb, "He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay." And I shall have no reason to complain,' he had said.But Mrs Hamley was only too much charmed with the prospect of having a young girl for a visitor; one whom it would not be a trouble to entertain;who might be sent out to ramble in the gardens, or told to read when the invalid was too much fatigued for conversation; and yet one whose youth and freshness would bring a charm, like a waft of sweet summer air, into her lonely shut-up life.Nothing could be pleasanter, and so Molly's visit to Hamley was easily settled.'I only wish Osborne and Roger had been at home,' said Mrs Hamley, in her slow soft voice.'She may find it dull being with old people, like the squire and me, from morning till night.When can she come? the darling - I am beginning to love her already!" Mr Gibson was very glad in his heart that the young men of the house were out of the way; he did not want his little Molly to be passing from Scylla to Charybdis; and, as he afterwards scoffed at himself for thinking, he had got an idea that all young men were wolves in chase of his one ewe-lamb.'She knows nothing of the pleasure in store for her,' he replied; 'and I am sure I don't know what feminine preparations she may think necessary, or how long they may take.You'll remember she is a little ignoramus, and has had no...no training in etiquette; our ways at home are rather rough for a girl, I'm afraid.But I know I could not send her into a kinder atmosphere than this.' When the squire heard from his wife of Mr Gibson's proposal, he was as much pleased as she at the prospect of their youthful visitor; for he was a man of a hearty hospitality, when his pride did not interfere with its gratification; and he was delighted to think of his sick wife's having such an agreeable companion in her hours of loneliness.After a while he said, - 'It's as well the lads are at Cambridge; we might have been having a love-affair if they had been at home.' 'Well - and if we had?' asked his more romantic wife.'It would not have done,' said the squire, decidedly.'Osborne will have had a first-rate education - as good as any man in the county - he'll have this property, and he's a Hamley of Hamley; not a family in the shire is as old as we are, or settled on their ground so well.Osborne may marry where he likes.If Lord Hollingford had a daughter, Osborne would have been as good a match as she could have required.It would never do for him to fall in love with Gibson's daughter - I should not allow it.So it's as well he's out of the way.' 'Well! perhaps Osborne had better look higher.' '"Perhaps!" I say he must.' The squire brought his hand down with a thump on the table, near him, which made his wife's heart beat hard for some minutes.'And as for Roger,' he continued, unconscious of the flutter he had put her into, 'he'll have to make his own way, and earn his own bread;and, I'm afraid, he's not getting on very brilliantly at Cambridge.He must not think of falling in love for these ten years.' 'Unless he marries a fortune,' said Mrs Hamley, more by way of concealing her palpitation than anything else; for she was unworldly and romantic to a fault.'No son of mine shall ever marry a wife who is richer than himself, with my good will,' said the squire again, with emphasis, but without a thump.
'I don't say but what if Roger is gaining five hundred a year by the time he's thirty, he shall not choose a wife with ten thousand pounds down;but I do say, if a boy of mine, with only two hundred a year - which is all Roger will have from us, and that not for a long time - goes and marries a woman with fifty thousand to her portion, I will disown him - it would be just disgusting.' 'Not if they loved each other, and their whole happiness depended upon their marrying each other?' put in Mrs Hamley, mildly.'Pooh! away with love! Nay, my dear, we loved each other so dearly we should never have been happy with any one else; but that's a different thing.
People are not like what they were when we were young.All the love now-a-days is just silly fancy, and sentimental romance, as far as I can see.' Mr Gibson thought that he had settled everything about Molly's going to Hamley before he spoke to her about it, which he did not do, until the morning of the day on which Mrs Hamley expected her.Then he said, - 'By the way, Molly! you are to go to Hamley this afternoon; Mrs Hamley wants you to go to her for a week or two, and it suits me capitally that you should accept her invitation just now.' 'Go to Hamley! This afternoon! Papa, you've got some odd reasons at the back of your head - some mystery, or something.Please, tell me what it is.Go to Hamley for a week or two! Why, I never was from home before this without you in all my life.' 'Perhaps not.I don't think you ever walked before you put your feet to the ground.Everything must have a beginning.' 'It has something to do with that letter that was directed to me, but that you took out of my hands before I could even see the writing of the direction.'