“You shall taste your father’s brewing,” he said. “I trust all is well with him?”
“I have no doubt it is, and I am much obliged to you, sir,” answered he carelessly. “To tell you the truth, I have not yet found my way to Lynn.”
“What, nephew! Have you come here before paying your respects to your own father?”
“I am afraid it is even so; and I will not pay you so poor a compliment as to remark that Brandon Grange lies forty miles nearer to Yarmouth than King’s Lynn.”
“Fie, young man, I am ashamed to hear you! I doubt whether I ought to have let you cross my threshold if I had known of this. Jessica,” he added, turning to my mother, “here is a youth who comes to pay you a visit before he has so much as set eyes on Lynn brewery, after three years!”
And thrice during the evening he returned to the same subject, each time rating master Rupert soundly for his filial neglect, and pointing out the many advantages which his father’s rich house at Lynn had over what it pleased him to call the homely grange of Brandon.
He questioned Rupert while we supped concerning his adventures, and what quarter of the world he had been in. But as to this my cousin maintained a singular reserve, merely stating that he had spent most of the time on a voyage round the Cape of Good Hope to the factories of the great East India Company, of Leadenhall Street in the City of London.
All this time I listened, saying nothing, for it was not my father’s custom to permit me to speak in his presence, unless I was first questioned. I cared for this the less because I knew that as soon as we were upstairs together my cousin would unburden himself to me freely. And already I scented some mystery under his guarded speech, which made me impatient for the time when we should be alone. I listened with an ill grace to the chapter which my father read to the household after supper, and it seemed to me that he had never prayed at such length and to so little purpose. I thought it especially needless that he should petition, for the space of full five minutes, for the fruitfulness of our flocks, for by this time the ewes had all dropped their lambs, and not one of them was a weakling.
Nevertheless it was over at last, and I quickly lighted the candle and conducted my cousin upstairs. He was always my bedfellow on the occasions of his visits to Brandon, and never spared to keep me awake as long as it pleased him to talk to me.