My uncle changed color, rose, lifted my mother’s hand to his lips, and sat himself down again in silence.
“I have heard,” said the Captain after a pause, “that the Marquis of Hastings, who is every inch a soldier and a gentleman,—and that is saying not a little, for he measures seventy-five inches from the crown to the sole,—when he received Louis XVIII. (then an exile) at Donnington, fitted up his apartments exactly like those his Majesty had occupied at the Tuileries. It was a kingly attention (my Lord Hastings, you know, is sprung from the Plantagenets),—a kingly attention to a king. It cost some money and made some noise. A woman can show the same royal delicacy of heart in this bit of porcelain, and so quietly that we men all think it a matter of course, brother Austin.”
“You are such a worshipper of women, Roland, that it is melancholy to see you single. You must marry again!”
My uncle first smiled, then frowned, and lastly sighed somewhat heavily.
“Your time will pass slowly in your old tower, poor brother,” continued my father, “with only your little girl for a companion.”
“And the past!” said my uncle; “the past, that mighty world—”
“Do you still read your old books of chivalry,—Froissart and the Chronicles, Palmerin of England, and Amadis of Gaul?”
“Why,” said my uncle, reddening, “I have tried to improve myself with studies a little more substantial. And,” he added with a sly smile, “there will be your great book for many a long winter to come.”
“Um!” said my father, bashfully.
“Do you know,” quoth my uncle, “that Dame Primmins is a very intelligent woman,—full of fancy, and a capital story-teller?”