“Do you know, as I lay here this last hour, I have been plotting out the sort of life a man could cut out for himself in a place like this. You are the sort of fellow to have the very pleasantest house in England.”
“I should like to try.”
“If you try, you’ll win. Shall I tell you, Master Dolly, the quality which first attracted me towards you?”
“What was it?”
“It was this. You are one of the very few young fellows I ever met who was not infected with a slavish worship of the titled classes. How, being a Cambridge man, you escaped it, I don’t know; but you have escaped it.”
“You’re right there,” said Dolly; but the colour that mounted so suddenly to his cheek, seemed to imply a certain confusion in making the assertion. “You know we had a peerage once in the family, and it is a hobby of my governor’s to try and revive it. He offered the present people to contest any two of the Opposition seats, and proposed to myself to go into the House; but I told him flatly, I’d rather get into Graham’s than into Parliament.”
“A much harder thing to do!”
“You’re in Graham’s, ain’t you?”
“Yes; and so shall you be next ballot, if you really wish for it!”
“What a trump you are! Do you know, Grenfell, I can’t make it out at all that I never met you before?”