“Make yourself at home, Tony,” said Skeffy, as soon as the old Lady left the room. “Believe me, it is with no common pleasure that I see you under my roof.”
“I was going to play parrot, and say, 'Don't you wish you may?'” muttered Tony, dryly.
“Unbeliever, that will not credit the mutton on his plate, nor the sherry in his glass! Hush! here they are.”
Alice sailed proudly into the room, gave her hand to Tony with a pretended air of condescension, but a real cordiality, and said, “You 're a good boy, after all; and Bella sends you all manner of kind forgivenesses.”
“My nephew Darner, Alice,” said Mrs. Maxwell, never very formal in her presentations of those she regarded as little more than children. “I suppose he 'll not mind being called Pickle before you?”
Even Tony—not the shrewdest, certainly, of observers—was struck by the well-bred ease with which his friend conducted himself in a situation of some difficulty, managing at the same time neither to offend the old lady's susceptibilities nor sacrifice the respect he owed himself. In fact, the presence of Alice recalled Skeffy, as if by magic, to every observance of his daily life. She belonged to the world he knew best,—perhaps the only one he knew at all; and his conversation at once became as easy and as natural as though he were once more back in the society of the great city.
Mrs. Maxwell, however, would not part with him so easily, and proceeded to put him through a catechism of all their connections—Skeffingtons, Darners, Maxwells, and Nevils—in every variety of combination. As Skeffy avowed afterwards, “The 'Little Go' was nothing to it.” With the intention of shocking the old lady, and what he called “shunting her” off all her inquiries, he reported nothing of the family but disasters and disgraces. The men and women of the house inherited, according to him, little of the proud boast of the Bayards; no one ever before heard such a catalogue of rogues, swindlers, defaulters, nor so many narratives of separations and divorces. What he meant for a shock turned out a seduction; and she grew madly eager to hear more,—more even than he was prepared to invent.
“Ugh!” said he at last to himself, as he tossed off a glass of sherry, “I'm coming fast to capital offences, and if she presses me more I'll give her a murder.”
These family histories, apparently so confidentially imparted, gave Alice a pretext to take Tony off with her, and show him the gardens. Poor Tony, too, was eager to have an opportunity to speak of his friend to Alice. “Skeffy was such a good fellow; so hearty, so generous, so ready to do a kind thing; and then, such a thorough gentleman! If you had but seen him, Alice, in our little cabin, so very different in every way from all he is accustomed to, and saw how delighted he was with everything; how pleasantly he fell into all our habits, and how nice his manner to my mother. She reads people pretty quickly; and I 'll tell you what she said,—'He has a brave big heart under all his motley.'”
“I rather like him already,” said Alice, with a faint smile at Tony's eagerness; “he is going to stop here, is he not?”