While young Lendrick attached himself to Trafford, and took him here and there to show him the grounds, Sir Brook walked beside Lucy, who did the honors of the place with a most charming courtesy.
“I am almost ashamed, sir,” said she, as they turned towards the house, “to have asked you to see such humble objects as these to which we attach value, for my brother tells me you are a great traveller; but it is just possible you have met in your journeys others who, like us, lived so much out of the world that they fancied they had the prettiest spot in it for their own.”
“You must not ask me what I think of all I have seen: here, Miss Lendrick, till my enthusiasm calms down;” and his look of admiration, so palpably addressed to herself, sent a flush to her cheek. “A man's belongings are his history,” said Sir Brook, quickly turning the conversation into an easier channel: “show me his study, his stable, his garden; let me see his hat, his cane, the volume he thrusts into his pocket, and I 'll make you an indifferent good guess about his daily doings.”
“Tell me of papa's. Come here, Tom,” cried she, as the two young men came towards her, “and listen to a bit of divination.”
“Nay, I never promised a lecture. I offered a confidence,” said he, in a half whisper; but she went on: “Sir Brook says that he reads people pretty much as Cuvier pronounced on a mastodon, by some small minute detail that pertained to them. Here's Tom's cigar-case,” said she, taking it from his pocket; “what do you infer from that, sir?”
“That he smokes the most execrable tobacco.”
“But can you say why?” asked Tom, with a sly twinkle of his eye.
“Probably for the same reason I do myself,” said Sir Brook, producing a very cheap cigar.
“Oh, that's a veritable Cuban compared to one of mine,” cried Tom; “and by way of making my future life miserable, here has been Mr. Trafford filling my pocket with real havannahs, giving me a taste for luxuries I ought never to have known of.”
“Know everything, sir, go everywhere, see all that the world can show you; the wider a man's experiences the larger his nature and the more open his heart,” said Foss-brooke, boldly.