'Oh! you may admire whom you like; but to say that she is prettier than Gertrude—why, you know, it is nonsense.'
'Very well, my dear fellow; then to oblige you, I'll fall in love with Gertrude.'
'I know you won't do that,' said Harry, 'for you are not so very fond of each other; but, joking apart, I do wish so you would make up to Linda.'
'Well, I will when my aunt leaves me £200 a year.'
There was no answering this; so the two men changed the conversation as they walked up together from the boat wharf to the office of the Weights and Measures.
It was just at this time that fortune and old Mr. Tudor, of the Shropshire parsonage, brought Charley Tudor to reside with our two heroes. For the first month, or six weeks, Charley was ruthlessly left by his companions to get through his Sundays as best he could. It is to be hoped that he spent them in divine worship; but it may, we fear, be surmised with more probability, that he paid his devotions at the shrine of some very inferior public-house deity in the neighbourhood of Somerset House. As a matter of course, both Norman and Tudor spoke much of their new companion to the ladies at Surbiton Cottage, and as by degrees they reported somewhat favourably of his improved morals, Mrs. Woodward, with a woman's true kindness, begged that he might be brought down to Hampton.
'I am afraid you will find him very rough,' said his cousin Alaric.
'At any rate you will not find him a fool,' said Norman, who was always the more charitable of the two.
'Thank God for that!' said Mrs. Woodward,' and if he will come next Saturday, let him by all means do so. Pray give my compliments to him, and tell him how glad I shall be to see him.'
And thus was this wild wolf to be led into the sheep-cote; this infernal navvy to be introduced among the angels of Surbiton Cottage. Mrs. Woodward thought that she had a taste for reclaiming reprobates, and was determined to try her hand on Charley Tudor.