“If she were Tom Leslie's daughter, do you mean?”
“Ay, any one's daughter?”
“To be sure I would, boy; and if I were only to consult my own feelings in the matter, I 'd say that I 'd prefer this alternative to the other.”
“Then I have no more to say,” said the son, as he walked away.
Within a month after this conversation, the little cottage was shut up, the garden wicket closed with a heavy padlock, and to any chance inquirer after its late residents, the answer returned was, that their present address was Place Vendôme, Paris.
“Tell me your company,” said the old adage; but, alas! the maxim had reference to other habits than our present-day ones. With what company now does not every man mix? Bishops discuss crime and punishment with ticket-of-leave men; fashionable exquisites visit the resorts of thieves; “swell people” go to hear madrigals at Covent Garden; and, as for the Ring, it is equally the table-land to peer and pickpocket. If, then, you would hazard a guess as to a man's manners nowadays, ask not his company, but his whereabouts. Run your eye over the addresses of that twice-remanded insolvent, ranging from Norfolk Street, Strand, to Berkeley Square, with Boulogne-sur-Mer, St John's Wood, Cadiz, the New Cut, Bermondsey, and the Edgware Road, in the interval, and say if you cannot, even out of such slight materials, sketch off his biography.
“The style is the man,” says the adage; and we might with as much truth say, “the street is the man.” In his locality is written his ways and means, his manners, his morals, his griefs, joys, and ambitions. We live in an age prolific in this lesson. Only cast a glance at the daily sacrifices of those who, to reside within the periphery of greatness, submit to a crushing rent and a comfortless abode.
Think of him who, to date his note “——— Street, Berkeley Square,” denies himself honest indulgence, all because the world has come to believe that certain spots are the “Regions of the Best,” and that they who live there must needs be that grand English ideal,—respectable.
Dear me, what unheard-of sacrifices does it demand of humble fortunes to be Respectable! what pinching and starving and saving! what self-denial and what striving! what cheerless little dinner-parties to other Respectables! what dyeing of black silks and storing of old ostrich feathers! And how and wherefore have we wandered off in this digression! Simply to say that Sir William Heathoote and his ward were living in a splendid quarter of Paris, and after that rambled into Germany, and thence to Como and down to Rome, very often delighted with their choice of residence, enjoying much that was enjoyable, but still—shall we own it?—never finding the exact place they seemed to want, nor exactly the people with whom they were willing to live in intimacy. They had been at Baden in the summer, at Como in the late autumn, at Rome in the winter, at Castellamare in the spring,—everywhere in its season, and yet somehow—And so they began to try that last resource of bored people,—places out of the season and places out of common resort,—and it was thus that they found themselves at Florence in June, and in Marlia in July.