‘Fulmort!’ exclaimed Mr. Parsons, with three notes of admiration at least in his voice. ‘What! the distiller?’
‘The enemy himself, the identical lord of gin-shops—at least his children. Did you not know that he married my next neighbour, Augusta Mervyn, and that our properties touch? He is not so bad by way of squire as he is here; and I have known his wife all my life, so we keep up all habits of good neighbourhood; and though they have brought up the elder ones very ill, they have not succeeded in spoiling this son and daughter. She is one of the very nicest girls I ever knew, and he, poor fellow, has a great deal of good in him.’
‘I think I have heard William speak of a Fulmort,’ said Mrs. Parsons. ‘Was he at Winchester?’
‘Yes; and an infinite help the influence there has been to him. I never saw any one more anxious to do right, often under great disadvantages. I shall be very glad for him to be with you. He was always intended for a clergyman, but now I am afraid there is a notion of putting him into the business; and he is here attending to it for the present, while his father and brother are abroad. I am sorry he is gone. I suppose he was seized with a fit of shyness.’
However, when all the party had been to their rooms and prepared for dinner, Robert reappeared, and was asked where he had been.
‘I went to dress,’ he answered.
‘Ah! where do you lodge? I asked Phœbe, but she said your letters went to Whittington-street.’
‘There are two very good rooms at the office which my father sometimes uses.’
Phœbe and Miss Charlecote glanced at each other, aware that Mervyn would never have condescended to sleep in Great Whittington-street. Mr. Parsons likewise perceived a straight-forwardness in the manner, which made him ready to acknowledge his fellow-Wykehamist and his son’s acquaintance; and they quickly became good friends over recollections of Oxford and Winchester, tolerably strong in Mr. Parsons himself, and all the fresher on ‘William’s’ account. Phœbe, whose experience of social intercourse was confined to the stately evening hour in the drawing-room, had never listened to anything approaching to this style of conversation, nor seen her brother to so much advantage in society. Hitherto she had only beheld him neglected in his uncongenial home circle, contemning and contemned, or else subjected to the fretting torment of Lucilla’s caprice. She had never known what he could be, at his ease, among persons of the same way of thinking. Speaking scarcely ever herself, and her fingers busy with her needle, she was receiving a better lesson than Miss Fennimore had ever yet been able to give. The acquiring of knowledge is one thing, the putting it out to profit another.
Gradually, from general topics, the conversation contracted