“He is now Lord Burrowfield. He gave me two fingers to shake the last time I met him at the Travellers'.”
“Oh, don't say that! Oh, don't tell me of such ingratitude!”
“My dear child, people usually regard gratitude as a debt which, once acknowledged, is acquitted; and perhaps they are right. It makes all intercourse freer and less trammelled.”
“Here comes Tom. May I tell him this story, or will you tell him yourself?”
“Not either, my dear Lucy. Your brother's blood is over-hot as it is. Let him not have any promptings to such exploits as these.”
“But may I tell papa?”
“Just as well not, Lucy. There were scores of wild things attributed to me in those days. He may possibly remember some of them, and begin to suspect that his daughter might be in better company.”
“How was it that you never told me of this exploit?” asked she, looking, not without admiration, at the hard stern features before her.
“My dear child, egotism is the besetting sin of old people, and even the most cautious lapse into it occasionally. Set me once a-talking of myself, all my prudence, all my reserve vanishes; so that, as a measure of safety for my friends and myself too, I avoid the theme when I can. There! Tom is beckoning to us. Let us go to him at once.”
Holy Island, or Inishcaltra, to give it its Irish name, is a wild spot, with little remarkable about it, save the ruins of seven churches and a curious well of fabulous depth. It was, however, a favorite spot with the vicar, whose taste in localities was somehow always associated with some feature of festivity, the great merit of the present spot being that you could dine without any molestation from beggars. In such estimation, indeed, did he hold the class, that he seriously believed their craving importunity to be one of the chief reasons of dyspepsia, and was profoundly convinced that the presence of Lazarus at his gate counterbalanced many of the goods which fortune had bestowed upon Dives.