He wrote to this gentleman, and the correspondence was encouraging. “These scapegraces,” said the artist in tuition, “are like crab-trees; abominable till you graft them, and then they bear the best fruit.”
While the letters were passing, came a climax. Reckless Reginald could keep no bounds intact: his inward definition of a boundary was “a thing you should go a good way out of your way rather than not overleap.”
Accordingly, he was often on Highmore farm at night, and even in Highmore garden; the boundary wall tempted him so.
One light but windy night, when everybody that could put his head under cover, and keep it there, did, reckless Reginald was out enjoying the fresh breezes; he mounted the boundary wall of Highmore like a cat, to see what amusement might offer. Thus perched, he speedily discovered a bright light in Highmore dining-room.
He dropped from the wall directly, and stole softly over the grass and peered in at the window.
He saw a table with a powerful lamp on it; on that table, and gleaming in that light, were several silver vessels of rare size and workmanship, and Mr. Bassett, with his coat off, and a green baize apron on, was cleaning one of these with brush and leather. He had already cleaned the others, for they glittered prodigiously.
Reginald's black eye gloated and glittered at this unexpected display of wealth in so dazzling a form.
But this was nothing to the revelation in store. When Mr. Bassett had done with that piece of plate he went to the paneled wall, and opened a door so nicely adapted to the panels, that a stranger would hardly have discovered it. Yet it was an enormous door, and, being opened, revealed a still larger closet, lined with green velvet and fitted with shelves from floor to ceiling.
Here shone, in all their glory, the old plate of two good families: that is to say, half the old plate of the Bassetts, and all the old plate of the Goodwyns, from whom came Highmore to Richard Bassett through his mother Ruperta Goodwyn, so named after her grandmother; so named after her aunt; so named after her godmother; so named after her father, Prince Rupert, cavalier, chemist, glass-blower, etc., etc.
The wall seemed ablaze with suns and moons, for many of the chased goblets, plates, and dishes were silver-gilt: none of your filmy electro-plate, but gold laid on thick, by the old mercurial process, in days when they that wrought in precious metals were honest—for want of knowing how to cheat.