“When?”
“You see, Tom, we have both of us something in our old selves which we must work off. You will work off your something by repose, and I must work off mine, if I can, by moving about. So I am on my travels. May we both have new selves better than the old selves, when we again shake hands! For your part try your best, dear Tom, and Heaven prosper you.”
“And Heaven bless you!” cried Tom, fervently, with tears rolling unheeded from his bold blue eyes.
CHAPTER XIV.
THOUGH Kenelm left Luscombe on Tuesday morning, he did not appear at Neesdale Park till the Wednesday, a little before the dressing-bell for dinner. His adventures in the interim are not worth repeating. He had hoped he might fall in again with the minstrel, but he did not.
His portmanteau had arrived, and he heaved a sigh as he cased himself in a gentleman’s evening dress. “Alas! I have soon got back again into my own skin.”
There were several other guests in the house, though not a large party,—they had been asked with an eye to the approaching election,—consisting of squires and clergy from remoter parts of the county. Chief among the guests in rank and importance, and rendered by the occasion the central object of interest, was George Belvoir.
Kenelm bore his part in this society with a resignation that partook of repentance.
The first day he spoke very little, and was considered a very dull young man by the lady he took in to dinner. Mr. Travers in vain tried to draw him out. He had anticipated much amusement from the eccentricities of his guest, who had talked volubly enough in the fernery, and was sadly disappointed. “I feel,” he whispered to Mrs. Campion, “like poor Lord Pomfret, who, charmed with Punch’s lively conversation, bought him, and was greatly surprised that, when he had once brought him home, Punch would not talk.”