“No doubt! Who would wish to see a better-looking fellow than Orsini?”
“And what has become of him,—of Quin, I mean?”
“Got away, clean away, and no one knows how or where. I 'll tell you, Tony,” said he, “what I would not tell another,—that they stole that idea of the explosive bombs from me.”
“You don't mean to say—”
“Of course not, old fellow. I 'm not a man to counsel assassination; but in the loose way I talk, throwing out notions for this and hints for that, they caught up this idea just as Blakeney did that plan of mine for rifling large guns.”
Tony fixed his eyes on him for a moment or two in silence, and then said gravely, “I think it must be near dinnertime; let us saunter towards home.”
CHAPTER XXXIII. A MORNING CALL AT TILNEY
On the morning after this conversation, the two friends set out for Tilney; Skeffy, as usual, full of himself, and consequently in high spirits,—happy in the present, and confident for the future. Tony, indeed, was delighted with his companion, and thoroughly enjoyed the volatile gayety of one who seemed to derive pleasure from everything. With all a school-boy's zest for a holiday, Skeffy would be forever at something. Now he would take the driver's seat on the car and play coachman till, with one wheel in the ditch and the conveyance nearly over, he was summarily deposed by Tony, and stoutly rated for his awkwardness.
Then it was his pleasure to “chaff” the people on the road,—a population the least susceptible of drollery in all Europe!—a grave, saturnine race, who, but for Tony's intervention, would have more than once resented such liberties very practically. As they saw the smoke from the chimney of a little cottage under the hill, and heard it was there Dolly Stewart lived, it was all Tony could do to prevent Skeffy running down to “have a look at her,” just as it required actual force to keep him from jumping off as they passed a village school, where Skeffy wanted to examine a class in the Catechism. Then he would eat and drink everywhere, and, with a mock desire for information, ask the name of every place they passed, and as invariably miscall them, to the no small amusement of the carman, this being about the limit of his appreciation of fun.