Of course he asked her advice.

He would not have lost that opportunity of making her speak of himself, nor of gauging the exact extent of the interest he hoped she felt in him.
It was two or three days after the long conversation he had enjoyed with her.

In that time they had met often and John's admiration for her, strengthened by his own romantic desire to be really in love, had begun to assume proportions which startled Mrs.Goddard and annoyed Mr.Juxon.
The latter felt that the boy was in his way; whenever he wanted to see Mrs.Goddard, John was at her side, talking eagerly and contesting his position against the squire with a fierceness which in an older and wiser man would have been in the worst possible taste.

Even as it was, Mr.
Juxon looked considerably annoyed as he stood by, smoothing his smooth hair from time to time with his large white hand and feeling that even at his age, and with his experience, a man might sometimes cut a poor figure.
On the particular occasion when the relations between John and the squire became an object of comment to Mrs.Ambrose, the whole party were assembled at Mrs.Goddard's cottage.

She had invited everybody to tea, a meal which in her little household represented a compromise between her appetite and Nellie's.