and pleasant temper, is tall and b. a somewhat clumsily and

wardness of manner and great trouble to his precise. · Much more will be expe than from such youths then Oxford or Cambrlig, Court.'

Never had Ma this fresh chapter had to make a hom No one welcomed! which mother and him, no one was ti place at Claydon.

vily built, an

293

CHAPTER IX.

MUN AND HIS LOVE-MAKING.

1656-1660.

'But if she cannot love you, sir?'

'I cannot be so answer'd-'

'Sooth but you must.'

Twelfth Night.

IN May 1656 Edmund Verney returned home, a young man in his twentieth year. He had an affectionate and pleasant temper, he was tall and handsome, but somewhat clumsily and heavily built, and his awkwardness of manner and slovenliness of dress were a great trouble to his precise and gentlemanlike father ; 'Much more will be expected from Mun,' he wrote, 'than from such youths as have gonn noe father then Oxford or Cambridg, or at most the Inns of Court.'

Never had Mary been more sadly missed than in this fresh chapter of the family life, when Sir Ralph had to make a home and a career for his eldest son. No one welcomed him back with the womanly love which mother and sister would have lavished upon him, no one was there to see that in taking a son's place at Claydon, his habits did not clash with his

Dec. 8,

1656

father's; and so the home-coming was not as successful as it might have been, after the joy of the first meetings and greetings had subsided. Sir Ralph himself had been an ideal son, never thinking of his own amusements, if he could share in Sir Edmund's duties and lighten his cares. Edmund arrived in the midst of the worries and vexations of the Decimation, but it did not occur to him that these things were any concern of his. He looked upon himself as the heir to a fine estate, and he felt annoyed when every request for money was met with a dismal recital of his grandfather's debts, and the burdens under which Sir Ralph was groaning. Careless of expense, and ignorant of business, Mun was far from appreciating the sacrifices his father had made for his education, in the days of his greatest poverty, or how hardly he now raised the 201. or 50l. which slipped through the son's fingers so rapidly.

Sir Ralph was full of large schemes for the improvement of Claydon, in which Mun took but little interest, and he thought, not unnaturally, that with less outlay in building and planting, his father might afford to give him a proper allowance, to enable him to be as well dressed, and as well mounted, as the other young sparks who splashed up the mud at a fashionable hour in Hyde Park.

'As

Sir Ralph justified himself as a father and landowner always does under these conditions. for my buildings, I see I have already lost one great part of the contentment I tooke in them, which was