'Tak' you this drop o' tea,' said another, 'it'll be doing you good,'
'The Lord will be having mercy on his soul,' said a third, whose conscience was large when she was offering comfort.
'There now, keep up your spirits, Mrs Jinkins, fach,' said a fourth, entering with a comfortable glass of gin and water that did seem of an exhilarating nature.
'There's a comfort Howel will be to you now!' said a fifth triumphantly.
'Deed to goodness, Griffey Jinkins was a saving man, and you have lost him, Mrs Jinkins, fach,' began the friend with the gin and water; 'but I am seeing no use in takking on so. When John Jones died, he was leaving me with ten children, and they have all come on somehow. And you have only wan son, and he is so ginteel! Drink you this, my dear, and don't be down-hearted.'
Mrs Jenkins turned from the tea to the gin and water with no apparent reluctance, and swallowed a portion of it. Revived by the beverage, she responded to the condolences of her friends by more rockings, sobs, and applications of the handkerchief and finally unburdened herself of her grief in the following manner.
'My son Howel, oh yes, he'll be a blessing to me, I know. Says I to my poor Griffey—oh, dear, only to be thinking of him now!—says I, "Let us be giving Howel a good eddication, and he so clever as never was, and able to be learning everything he do put his mind to, and never daunted at nothing—grammar, nor music, nor Latin, nor no heathen languages, and able to read so soon as he could speak, and knowing all the beasts in the ark one from another, when he was no bigger than that," says I, to my poor Griffey; "oh, annwyl! we have only wan child, let him be a clargy, or a 'torney, or a doctor, or something smart," and says he, "I can't afford it." He was rather near or so, you know, was my poor Griffey; but I never was letting him rest day or night, and the only thing he wasn't liking was being much talked over. So says I, "Come you, Jinkins, bach,"—he liked to be called by his sirname—"if you do larn Howel well, he'll be making his fortune some day," for he do say so, he do be always saying, "I'll be a great man, and get as much money as father." I eused to put in the last words of myself, for Howel never was taking to making money, but 'ould as soon give it away as not. Only poor Griffey—oh dear! oh dear!—was never knowing that, because I did be hiding it from him as much as I could.'
Whilst the widow talks on in this strain to her sympathising friends, her son and Rowland Prothero are in another small room of the house, engaged in a very different style of conversation. The room in which they are is worth a few words of description, not for any beauty or desert of its own, but for its heterogeneous, contents. You would think a small music warehouse, a miniature tobacco shop, or branch depot of foreign grammars and dictionaries were before you. Every kind of musical instrument seems to have met with a companion in this tiny apartment. Here are a violin, violoncello, horn, and cornopean; there an old Welsh harp and unstrung guitar. On this shelf are pipes of all sorts and sizes, forms, and nations—the straight English, the short German, and the long Turkish; on that are cigar-boxes, snuff-boxes, and tobacco-boxes of various kinds and appearances. Scattered about the room are play-books without number, from Shakspeare to the dramatists of the present day; and, interspersed with these, collections of songs of all countries and of all grades of merit. Some few novels, mostly French, live with the plays and songs; and Latin, French, German, Italian, Welsh, Spanish, and English grammars and dictionaries take up their abode in every available corner. A quantity of fishing tackle and a gun are thrown upon the window seat, and an embroidered waistcoat, blue satin cravat, and a pair of yellow kid gloves lie on an unoccupied chair.
From the general appearance of this room, the imagination would conceive great things of its inmate. All we shall here say is that he is one who has the reputation of being a natural genius, and firmly believes that he is one.
As all natural geniuses are supposed to have something very remarkable in their appearance, we will just take a sketch of the miser's son, as he alternately leans on the table or stalks about the room during his earnest conversation with his cousin. He has decidedly sentimental hair; long, black, shining, and with a tendency to curl; he has what might be termed poetical eyes, bright, piercing, and very restless; the sharp, aquiline nose of his father, slightly modified; and a mouth and brow which curl and knit in a manner that may be poetic, but might be disagreeable, under less soothing influences. That he is very handsome no one could dispute, and it is equally certain that he has an air much above the position in which he was born; but the expression of his face inspires distrust rather than confidence, and conveys the impression that there is more of passion than feeling beneath the fiery eyes and compressed mouth.