Wheeler, was coming for dinner. A fiftyish widower who instructed Matt and half a dozen other sprouts in the rudiments of Latin, Wheeler had already proposed to Emily three times, and she knew she would hear his heavy gallantries this night with special impatience. If the same florid phrases had fallen from Richard Falk's lips she would have drunk them in like a greedy shark. She wrinkled her nose at the hussy in the glass and stuck out her tongue. Housemaid, indeed. Laughing at herself, she went down to greet her aunt and father. They had brought Mr. Wheeler with them, a circumstance which allowed Emily to put dinner forward a quarter hour. No one remarked the briskness of the preliminaries. Her father had spent the day making an extra crop of hay in his water meadow and declared himself sharp-set. Mr. Wheeler had no such excuse for appetite but dug in with relish anyway. Between masculine munching and Aunt Fan's detailed account of a visit with a widowed friend in Winchester, Emily had scarcely to say a word.
