“All new to me, and I to them. Don't introduce me, Mark; leave me to shake down in any bivouac that may offer. I'll not be a bear if people don't bait me. You understand?”
“Perhaps I do.”
“There are no foreigners? That's a loss. They season society, though they never make it, and there's an evasive softness in French that contributes much to the courtesies of life. So it is; the habits of the Continent to the wearied man of the world are just like loose slippers to a gouty man. People learn to be intimate there without being over-familiar,—a great point, Mark.”
“By the way,—talking of that same familiarity,—there was a young fellow who got the habit of coming here, before I returned from India, on such easy terms that I found him installed like one of ourselves. He had his room, his saddle-horse, a servant that waited on him, and who did his orders, as if he were a son of the family. I cut the thing very short when I came home, by giving him a message to do some trifling service, just as I would have told my valet. He resented, left the house, and sent me this letter next morning.”
“Not much given to letter-writing, I see,” muttered Mait-land, as he read over Tony's epistle; “but still the thing is reasonably well put, and means to say, 'Give me a chance, and I 'm ready for you.' What's the name,—Buller?”
“No; Butler,—Tony Butler they call him here.”
“What Butlers does he belong to?” asked Maitland, with more interest in his manner.
“No Butlers at all,—at least, none of any standing. My sisters, who swear by this fellow, will tell you that his father was a colonel and C.B., and I don't know what else; and that his uncle was, and I believe is, a certain Sir Omerod Butler, minister or ex-minister somewhere; but I have my doubts of all the fine parentage, seeing that this youth lives with his mother in a cottage here that stands in the rent-roll at £18 per annum.”
“There is a Sir Omerod Butler,” said Maitland, with a slow, thoughtful enunciation.
“But if he be this youth's uncle, he never knows nor recognizes him. My sister, Mrs. Trafford, has the whole story of these people, and will be charmed to tell it to you.”