“Well,” sighed Cashel, “I'm not quite certain that this same world of yours and I shall be long friends, if even we begin as such. I have all my life been somewhat of a rebel, except where authority was lax enough to make resistance unnecessary. How am I to get on here, hemmed in and fenced by a hundred restrictions?”
Mr. Kennyfeck could not explain to him that these barriers were less restrictions against personal liberty than defences against aggression; so he only murmured some commonplaces about “getting habituated,” and “time,” and so on, and apologized for what he, in reality, might have expatiated on as privileges.
“My mistress wishes to know, sir,” said a footman, at this juncture, “if Mr. Cashel will drive out with her? the carriage is at the door.”
“Delighted!” cried Cashel, looking at the same time most uncourteously pleased to get away from his tiresome companion.
Cashel found Mrs. Kennyfeck and her daughters seated in a handsome barouche, whose appointments, bating, perhaps, some little exuberance in display, were all perfect. The ladies, too, were most becomingly attired, and the transition from the tittle cobwebbed den of the solicitor to the free air and pleasant companionship, excited his spirits to the utmost.
“How bored you must have been by that interview!” said Mrs. Kennyfeck, as they drove away.
“Why do you say so?” said Cashel, smiling.
“You looked so weary, so thoroughly tired out, when you joined us. I'm certain Mr. Kennyfeck has been reading aloud all the deeds and documents of the trial, and reciting the hundred-and-one difficulties which his surpassing acuteness, poor dear man! could alone overcome.”
“No, indeed you wrong him,” said Roland, with a laugh; “he scarcely alluded to what he might have reasonably dwelt upon with pride, and what demands all my gratitude. He was rather giving me, what I so much stand in need of, a little lecture on my duties and devoirs as a possessor of fortune; a code, I shame to confess, perfectly strange to me.”
A very significant glance from Mrs. Kennyfeck towards the girls revealed the full measure of her contempt for the hardihood of poor Mr. Kennyfeck's daring; but quickly assuming a smile, she said, “And are we to be permitted to hear what these excellent counsels were, or are these what the Admiralty calls 'secret instructions'?”