“Yes, indeed,” answered Percival, with his shy, arch smile. “Laughton at present has no worthier owner than myself.”
The gentleman made two strides to Percival and shook him heartily by the hand.
“This is pleasant indeed!” he exclaimed. “You must excuse my freedom; but I knew well poor old Sir Miles, and my heart warms at the sight of his representative.”
Percival glanced at his new acquaintance, and on the whole was prepossessed in his favour. He seemed somewhere on the sunnier side of fifty, with that superb yellow bronze of complexion which betokens long residence under Eastern skies. Deep wrinkles near the eyes, and a dark circle round them, spoke of cares and fatigue, and perhaps dissipation. But he had evidently a vigour of constitution that had borne him passably through all; his frame was wiry and nervous; his eye bright and full of life; and there was that abrupt, unsteady, mercurial restlessness in his movements and manner which usually accompanies the man whose sanguine temperament prompts him to concede to the impulse, and who is blessed or cursed with a superabundance of energy, according as circumstance may favour or judgment correct that equivocal gift of constitution.
Percival said something appropriate in reply to so much cordiality paid to the account of the Sir Miles whom he had never seen, and seated himself, colouring slightly under the influence of the fixed, pleased, and earnest look still bent upon him.
Searching for something else to say, Percival asked Mrs. Mivers if she had lately seen John Ardworth.
The guest, who had just reseated himself, turned his chair round at that question with such vivacity that Mrs. Mivers heard it crack. Her chairs were not meant for such usage. A shade fell over her rosy countenance as she replied,—
“No, indeed (please, sir, them chairs is brittle)! No, he is like Madame at Brompton, and seldom condescends to favour us now. It was but last Sunday we asked him to dinner. I am sure he need not turn up his nose at our roast beef and pudding!”
Here Mr. Mivers was taken with a violent fit of coughing, which drew off his wife’s attention. She was afraid he had taken cold.
The stranger took out a large snuff-box, inhaled a long pinch of snuff, and said to St. John,—