At any rate, the Hamleys were a very old family, if not aborigines.They had not increased their estate for centuries; they had held their own, if even with an effort, and had not sold a rood of it for the last hundred years or so.But they were not an adventurous race.They never traded, or speculated, or tried agricultural improvements of any kind.They had no capital in any bank; nor what perhaps would have been more in character, hoards of gold in any stocking.Their mode of life was simple, and more like that of yeomen than squires.Indeed Squire Hamley, by continuing the primitive manners and customs of his forefathers, the squires of the eighteenth century, did live more as a yeoman, when such a class existed, than as a squire of this generation.There was a dignity in this quiet conservatism that gained him an immense amount of respect both from high and low; and he might have visited at every house in the county had he so chosen.But he was very indifferent to the charms of society; and perhaps this was owing to the fact that the squire, Roger Hamley, who at present lived and reigned at Hamley, had not received so good an education as he ought to have done.His father, Squire Stephen, had been plucked at Oxford, and, with stubborn pride, he had refused to go up again.Nay, more! he had sworn a great oath, as men did in those days, that none of his children to come should ever know either university by becoming a member of it.He had only one child, the present squire, and he was brought up according to his father's word; he was sent to a petty provincial school, where he saw much that he hated, and then turned loose upon the estate as its heir.Such a bringing up did not do him all the harm that might have been anticipated.He was imperfectly educated, and ignorant on many points; but he was aware of his deficiency, and regretted it in theory.He was awkward and ungainly in society, and so kept out of it as much as possible; and he was obstinate, violent-tempered, and dictatorial in his own immediate circle.On the other side, he was generous, and true as steel; the very soul of honour in fact.
He had so much natural shrewdness, that his conversation was always worth listening to, although he was apt to start by assuming entirely false premisses, which he considered as incontrovertible as if they had been mathematically proved; but, given the correctness of his premisses, nobody could bring more natural wit and sense to bear upon the arguments based upon them.He had married a delicate fine London lady; it was one of those perplexing marriages of which one cannot understand the reasons.Yet they were very happy, though possibly Mrs Hamley would not have sunk into the condition of a chronic invalid, if her husband had cared a little more for her various tastes, or allowed her the companionship of those who did.After his marriage he was wont to say he had got all that was worth having out of that crowd of houses they called London.It was a compliment to his wife which he repeated until the year of her death; it charmed her at first, it pleased her up to the last time of her hearing it; but, for all that, she used sometimes to wish that he would recognize the fact that there might still be something worth hearing and seeing in the great city.But he never went there again, and though he did not prohibit her going, yet he showed so little sympathy with her when she came back full of what she had done on her visit that she ceased caring to go.Not but what he was kind and willing in giving his consent, and in furnishing her amply with money.'There, there, my little woman, take that! Dress yourself up as fine as any on 'em, and buy what you like, for the credit of Hamley of Hamley; and go to the park and the play, and show off with the best on 'em.I shall be glad to see thee back again, I know; but have thy fling while thou art about it.' Then when she came back it was, 'Well, well, it has pleased thee, I suppose, so that's all right.But the very talking about it tires me, I know, and I can't think how you have stood it all.Come out and see how pretty the flowers are looking in the south garden.I've made them sow all the seeds you like; and I went over to Hollingford nursery to buy the cuttings of the plants you admired last year.A breath of fresh air will clear my brain after listening to all this talk about the whirl of London, which is like to have turned me giddy.' Mrs Hamley was a great reader, and had considerable literary taste.She was gentle and sentimental; tender and good.She gave up her visits to London; she gave up her sociable pleasure in the company of her fellows in education and position.Her husband, owing to the deficiencies of his early years, disliked associating with those to whom he ought to have been an equal; he was too proud to mingle with his inferiors.He loved his wife all the more dearly for her sacrifices for him; but, deprived of all her strong interests, she sank into ill-health; nothing definite; only she never was well.Perhaps if she had had a daughter it would have been better for her; but her two children were boys, and their father, anxious to give them the advantages of which he himself had suffered the deprivation, sent the lads very early to a preparatory school.They were to go on to Rugby and Cambridge; the idea of Oxford was hereditarily distasteful in the Hamley family.Osborne, the eldest - so called after his mother's maiden name - was full of tastes, and had some talent.His appearance had all the grace and refinement of his mother's.He was sweet-tempered and affectionate, almost as demonstrative as a girl.He did well at school, carrying away many prizes; and was, in a word, the pride and delight of both father and mother; the confidential friend of the latter, in default of any other.
Roger was two years younger than Osborne; clumsy and heavily built, like his father; his face was square, and the expression grave, and rather immobile.
