“True,” said Philip. “And I have only to thank you for your kindness, and return to town.”
“But stay with us this day—do—let me feel that we are friends. I assure you poor Sidney’s fate has been a load on my mind ever since he left. You shall have the bed he slept in, and over which your mother bent when she left him and me for the last time.”
These words were said with so much feeling, that the adventurer wrung his uncle’s hand, and said, “Forgive me, I wronged you—I will be your guest.”
Mrs. Morton, strange to say, evinced no symptoms of ill-humour at the news of the proffered hospitality. In fact, Miss Margaret had been so eloquent in Philip’s praise during his absence, that she suffered herself to be favourably impressed. Her daughter, indeed, had obtained a sort of ascendency over Mrs. M. and the whole house, ever since she had received so excellent an offer. And, moreover, some people are like dogs—they snarl at the ragged and fawn on the well-dressed. Mrs. Morton did not object to a nephew de facto, she only objected to a nephew in forma pauperis. The evening, therefore, passed more cheerfully than might have been anticipated, though Philip found some difficulty in parrying the many questions put to him on the past. He contented himself with saying, as briefly as possible, that he had served in a foreign service, and acquired what sufficed him for an independence; and then, with the ease which a man picks up in the great world, turned the conversation to the prospects of the family whose guest he was. Having listened with due attention to Mrs. Morton’s eulogies on Tom, who had been sent for, and who drank the praises on his own gentility into a very large pair of blushing ears,—also, to her self-felicitations on Miss Margaret’s marriage,—item, on the service rendered to the town by Mr. Roger, who had repaired the town-hall in his first mayoralty at his own expense,—item, to a long chronicle of her own genealogy, how she had one cousin a clergyman, and how her great-grandfather had been knighted,—item, to the domestic virtues of all her children,—item, to a confused explanation of the chastisement inflicted on Sidney, which Philip cut short in the middle; he asked, with a smile, what had become of the Plaskwiths. “Oh!” said Mrs. Morton, “my brother Kit has retired from business. His son-in-law, Mr. Plimmins, has succeeded.”
“Oh, then, Plimmins married one of the young ladies?”
“Yes, Jane—she had a sad squint!—Tom, there is nothing to laugh at,—we are all as God made us,—‘Handsome is as handsome does,’—she has had three little uns!”
“Do they squint too?” asked Philip; and Miss Margaret giggled, and Tom roared, and the other young men roared too. Philip had certainly said something very witty.
This time Mrs. Morton administered no reproof; but replied pensively
“Natur is very mysterious—they all squint!”
Mr. Morton conducted Philip to his chamber. There it was, fresh, clean, unaltered—the same white curtains, the same honeysuckle paper as when Catherine had crept across the threshold.