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"How's that?" said Frank, at first surprised and then delighted at Willy's breaking from his reserve. "What I mean is, that I think you would be more successful if you would lay aside daggers and revolvers, and try to win her affection by patience and gentleness. Maggie was talking to me about it no later than last night, and I could see clearly that you frighten her with bluster.
No respectable young man in Cedarville would have been seen there. It offered no temptations to one moving in Willy's circle. But the opening of the 'Sickle and Sheaf' formed a new era. Judge Hammond himself not the purest man in the world, I'm afraid gave his countenance to the establishment, and talked of Simon Slade as an enterprising man who ought to be encouraged.
It begins in front of the house, where flowers of varied hue succeed one another as season follows season, and roses red, white, and yellow seem almost perennial, since they bud forth in late May and scarcely disappear till December. But that is due to our wonderful climate as much as to Willy's attention.
"There was Willy's schooner tied up next to me, and 'e got a slant and slid away, while my boat busts 'er sides open on the reef, The 'ole blooming atoll was 'eaped with the blooming cargo. Willy 'ad luck; I 'ad 'ell. It's all an 'azard." He had not found his aitches since he left Liverpool, thirty years earlier, nor dropped his silly expletives.
"What Judge Hammond fears may be all too true that, in the present condition of Willy's affairs, which have reached the point of disaster, his tempter means to secure the largest possible share of property yet in his power to pledge or transfer, to squeeze from his victim the last drop of blood that remains, and then fling him, ruthlessly, from his hands."
Also that there was a strong taste for personal luxury in Bridget, which seemed entirely lacking in Nelly. 'She wanted Willy's money! thought Cicely 'and couldn't get it for herself. So when poor Sarratt disappeared, she saw a way of getting it through Nelly. Not a bad idea! if you are to have ideas of that kind. But then, why behave like an idiot when Providence had done the thing for you?
So Willy's mother soothed him all she could. "Of course you didn't, dear," said she. "Mamma knows you didn't. Don't you worry any more about it." It was early, but she got some supper for him, and put him to bed, and sat beside him until he went to sleep.
Their dwelling is nearest to ours; it stands, indeed, but a few yards down the road which leads past our gate. It is a white-walled, thatched house of one story only like most of the habitations in Ardmuirland; it stands in a little garden whose neatness and the prolific nature of its soil are standing proofs of Willy's industry in hours of leisure.
She told him over and over that she knew he "didn't," in reply to his piteous assertions, and all the time she had not the least idea what it was all about. After he had fallen asleep she went downstairs, and Grandma Stockton told her. Willy's father had come, and he also heard the story. "There's some mistake about it," said he. "I'll make Willy tell me about it, to-morrow.
"I knew the best people when I was at Oxford, why can I not know them now? Here we are doing the same thing from year's end to year's end; why, with our money we ought to be hob-nobbing with the duke." In moments of dejection this was one of Willy's commonest thoughts. "I did my best, but I was opposed. Father doesn't care, and as for the girls, they'll take up with any man so long as he is young.
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