“Yes. We were both examined in the same case before a committee of the House, and I made his acquaintance then.”
“What sort of person is he?” asked Temple.
“Is he jolly, Mr. Harding?—that's the question,” cried Jack. “I suspect we shall be overborne by greatness, and a jolly fellow would be a boon from heaven.”
“I believe he is what might be called jolly,” said Harding, cautiously.
“Jolly sounds like a familiar word for vulgar,” said Marion. “I hope Mr. Harding does not mean that.”
“Mr. Harding means nothing of that kind, I 'll be sworn,” broke in Jack. “He means an easy-tempered fellow, amusing and amusable. Well, Nelly, if it's not English, I can't help it—it ought to be; but when one wants ammunition, one takes the first heavy thing at hand. Egad! I'd ram down a minister plenipotentiary, rather than fire blank-cartridge.”
“Is Lord Culduff also jolly, Mr. Harding?” asked Eleanor, now looking up with a sparkle in her eye.
“I scarcely know—I have the least possible acquaintance with his Lordship; I doubt, indeed, if he will recollect me,” said Harding, with diffidence.
“What are we to do with this heavy swell when he comes, is the puzzle to me,” said Augustus, gravely. “How is he to be entertained,—how amused? Here's a county with nothing to see—nothing to interest—without a neighborhood. What are we to do with him?”
“The more one is a man of the world, in the best sense of that phrase, the more easily he finds how to shape his life to any and every circumstance,” said Temple, with a sententious tone and manner.