Cave gave a kindly nod of assent to this, not wishing, even by a word, to increase the painful embarrassment of the scene.
“Heigh ho!” cried Sewell, throwing himself down in a chair, “there's one care off my heart, at least! I can remember a time when a night's bad luck would n't have cost me five minutes of annoyance; but nowadays I have got it so hot and so heavy from fortune, I begin not to know myself.” Then, with a sudden change of tone, he added: “When are you coming out to us again? Shall we say Tuesday?”
“We are to be inspected on Tuesday. Trafford writes me that he is coming over with General Halkett,—whom, by the way, he calls a Tartar,—and says, 'If the Sewells are within hail, say a kind word to them on my part.'”
“A good sort of fellow, Trafford,” said Sewell, carelessly.
“An excellent fellow,—no better living!”
“A very wide-awake one too,” said Sewell, with one eye closed, and a look of intense cunning.
“I never thought so. It is, to my notion, to the want of that faculty he owes every embarrassment he has ever suffered. He is unsuspecting to a fault.”
“It's not the way I read him; though, perhaps, I think as well of him as you do. I 'd say that for his years he is one of the very shrewdest young fellows I ever met.”
“You astonish me! May I ask if you know him well?”
“Our acquaintance is not of very old date, but we saw a good deal of each other at the Cape. We rode out frequently, dined, played, and conversed freely together; and the impression he made upon me was that every sharp lesson the world had given him he 'd pay back one day or other with a compound interest.”