“Mr. Dunn has no appetite for our coarse country fare, Augusta,” said Lord Glengariff; “you must take him over the cliffs, to-morrow, and let him feel the sharp Glengariff air. There's nothing but hunger for it.”
“Pardon me, my Lord, if I say that I accept with gratitude the proposed remedy, though I don't acknowledge a just cause for it. I am always a poor eater.”
“Tell him of Beverley, Augusta, tell him of Beverley,” said my Lord.
“Oh, it was simply a case similar to your own,” said she, hesitatingly, “and, in all probability, incurred in the same way. The Duke of Beverley, a very hard-worked man, as you know, always at Downing Street at ten, and never leaving it till night, came here two years ago, to pass a few weeks with us, and although hale and stout, to look at, could eat nothing,—that is, he cared for nothing. It was in vain we put in requisition all our little culinary devices to tempt him; he sat down with us, and, like yourself, would fain persuade us that he dined, but he really touched nothing; and, in utter despair, I determined to try what a course of open air and exercise would do.”
“She means eight hours a day hard walking, Dunn,” chimed in Lord Glengariff; “a good grouse-shooter's pace, too, and cross country.”
“Well, confess that my remedy succeeded,” said she, triumphantly.
“That it did. The Duke went back to town fifteen years younger. No one knew him; the Queen did not know him. And to this day he says, 'Whenever I'm hipped or out of sorts, I know what a resource I have in the Glengariff heather.'”
It is possible that Davenport Dunn listened with more of interest to this little incident because the hero of it was a Duke and a Cabinet Minister.
Assuredly the minor ills of life, the petty stomachic miseries, and such like, are borne with a more becoming patience when we know that they are shared by peers and great folk. Not by you, valued reader, nor even by me,—we have no such weaknesses,—but by the Davenport Dunns of this world, one of whom we are now treating. It was pleasant, too, to feel that he not only had a ducal ailment, but that he was to be cured like his Grace! And so he listened eagerly, as Lady Augusta went on to tell of the various localities, strange and unpronounceable, that they used to visit, and how his Grace loved to row across such an arm of the lake, and what delight he took in the ascent of such a mountain. “But you shall judge for yourself, Mr. Dunn,” said she, smiling, “and I now engage you for to-morrow, after breakfast.” And with that she rose, and, accompanied by Sybella, passed into the drawing-room. Dunn was about to follow, when Lord Glengariff called out, “I'm of the old school, Dunn, and must have half an hour with my bottle before I join the ladies.”
We do not stop to explain—perhaps we should not succeed to our wishes if we tried—why it was that Dunn was more genial, better satisfied, and more at his ease than when the dinner began; but so it was that as he filled the one glass of claret be meant to indulge in, he felt that he had been exaggerating to his own mind the disagreeables of this visit, and that everybody was kinder, pleasanter, and more natural than he had expected.