Sweet and Twenty by Joan Smith

asked as they walked along.
    “Yes, Hudson had some troublemakers brought in, but Reising is up to anything. He let it be known there was free ale outside, and they all deserted the hall. There was a terrible fight outside—the constables finally managed to break it up. Hudson pulled a door right off its hinges when one of our boys went for him with a pitchfork. He is a great boxer, Reising says—floored Jackson in London. The handle of the pitchfork caught him a knock, but he didn’t lose the eye.”
    This was not quite Hudson’s version of the story, but close enough to it that Lillian had no doubt he was in the middle of the fight and very likely the ringleader.
    “Were you hurt at all?”Sara continued.
    “No, I am quicker on my feet than that. I caught a potato and threw it back. I see Hudson is making up to Ratchett’s daughter. I’d give a monkey to know what he’s up to. It’s certain the heir to a barony is not planning to get himself buckled to a Cit’s daughter. Did he say anything?”
    “No, nothing,”Sara told him.
    Lillian, walking on Alistair’s other arm, was sent reeling at this disclosure. “Mr. Hudson is heir to a barony, you say?”she asked.
    “Yes—old Cecilford’s heir. He is only a nephew, but Cecilford has no sons, just two plug-ugly daughters. I fancy they plan to palm one of them off on Hudson if they can. He’ll be inheriting any day; the old boy is eighty and the younger daughter nearly thirty. I wonder that Hudson bothers to embroil himself in a matter of this sort, for he has a dandy spread of his own in Kent. But they have been ardent Whigs forever, of course, and Brougham keeps him busy. He is putting up a tough fight, I can tell you. We thought this riding a shoo-in, especially with Fellows running, but Reising says Hudson is a devil and will stop at nothing. Well, here is your carriage, ladies.”He smiled and was off.
    “What do you make of that?”Lillian said to Sara, so overcome at Hudson’s new eminence that she could hardly think straight.
    “I didn’t know you saw it,”Sara answered shyly.
    “Saw it? Heard it, you mean.”
    “No, no, he didn’t say anything of interest, but he squeezed my fingers ever so tight before he left, and smiled.”
    No mention was made of either the squeezed fingers or the barony on the way home, and Lillian was not sure even then whether to tell her aunt. With a homely cousin and Miss Ratchett after Hudson, she had no desire for Martha to add Sara to the list. But Martha had heard intimations of Hudson’s glory from other sources at the frolic, and brought it up at once.
    “They are saying about town that Hudson is heir to Cecilford,”she declared.
    “Yes, Mr. Alistair told us so. What is a barony anyway?”Sara asked.
    “It is a title, goose!”her aunt snapped, “and here we have been wasting our time chasing that clothhead of a Fellows, when we ought to have been concentrating on Hudson. I’ll tell you what to do, Lillian. Next time they come, you chat up to Fellows, and let Sara smile at Hudson.”
    “Maybe I would like to take a crack at a baron myself!”she answered hotly.
    “You have been doing your best ever since we met him, but he paid no notice to you tonight. It was Miss Ratchett he was interested in. Thorstein is as well as caught—I had a note from him today inquiring after you. I often notice Hudson glancing toward Sara, smiling to himself. Anyone would be proud to have such a beautiful wife, even a fine, distinguished gentleman like Mr. Hudson. I suspected from the start he was no common clerk. You recall I mentioned early on that he was very clever . . . running the show, in fact. His tailoring, his carriage—everything about him of the first stare. He will want a wife, a beautiful wife, to set him off, and it is no matter that Sara is a ninnyhammer, for he has brains enough for two.”
    Mr. Hudson had finally been placed on the pinnacle where he belonged, and it seemed hard that now that he was