THE ELDEST SON

BY

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

Author of "Exton Manor"

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
Published September, 1911

To
KATHLEEN

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I    The Squire Is Infernally Worried
II    A Question of Matrimony
III    Exit Miss Bird
IV    The Dower-House
V    Lady George
VI    Blaythorn Rectory
VII    The Squire Puts His Foot Down
VIII    The Squire Feels Trouble Coming
IX    Dick Pays a Sunday Visit
X    The Meet at Apthorpe Common
XI    Dick Leaves Kencote and Makes a Discovery
XII    The House Party
XIII    The Hunt Ball
XIV    A Shoot
XV    The Guns and the Ladies
XVI    The Money Question
XVII    Sunday and Monday
XVIII    Mrs. Clinton Chooses a Governess
XIX    Mrs. Clinton In Jermyn Street
XX    Aunt Laura Intervenes
XXI    An Engagement
XXII    Dick Comes Home
XXIII    Humphrey Counts His Chickens
XXIV    Virginia Goes to Kencote
XXV    A Lawn Meet
XXVI    What Miss Phipp Saw
XXVII    The Run of the Season
XXVIII    Property
XXIX    Brothers
XXX    Miss Bird Hears All About It

CHAPTER I

THE SQUIRE IS INFERNALLY WORRIED

"Nina," said the Squire, "I'm most infernally worried." He was sitting in his wife's morning-room, in a low chair by the fire. In front of him was a table set for tea for one—himself. There were buttered toast and dry toast and preserves, a massive silver teapot, milk jug, cream jug, and sugar basin, a breakfast cup of China tea, and two boiled eggs, one of which he was attacking, sitting forward in his chair with his legs bent. He had come in from hunting a few minutes before, at about six o'clock, and it was his habit thus to consume viands which most men of his age and bulk might have been afraid of, as likely to spoil their dinner. But he was an active man, in spite of his fifty-nine years and his tendency to put on flesh, and it would have taken more than a tea that was almost a meal to reduce his appetite for dinner at eight, after a day in the saddle and a lunch off sandwiches and a flask of sherry. When his tea was over he would indulge himself in half an hour's nap, with the Times open at the leader page on his knee, and go up to dress, feeling every inch of him a sportsman and an English country gentleman.

His tea was generally brought to him in his library. This evening a footman had followed him into that room immediately upon his entering the house, as usual, had unbuckled his spurs, pulled off his boots for him, and put on in their place a pair of velvet slippers worked in silk, which had been warming in front of the fire. Only when his coat was wet or much splashed with mud did the Squire change that. He considered smoking-jackets rather effeminate, and slippers, on ordinary occasions, "sloppy." It was only in his dressing-room or on these evenings after hunting that he wore them. Otherwise, if he had to change his boots during the daytime he put on another pair. He was particular on little points like this. All his rules were kept precisely, by himself and