‘Does it not do one good to see those two quarrelling just like old times?’ exclaimed one aunt to the other.
‘And William looking on as contemptuous as ever?’ said Albinia.
‘Not at all. I rejoice to have this week with you. I should like to see your boy. Maurice says he is a thorough young soldier.’
Mr. Kendal looked pleased.
The man of study had a penchant for the man of action, and the brothers-in-law were drawing together. Mars, the great geographical master, was but opening his gloomy school on the Turkish soil, and the world was discovering its ignorance beyond the Pinnock’s Catechisms of its youth. Maurice treated Mr. Kendal as a dictionary, and his stores of Byzantine, Othman, and Austrian lore, chimed in with the perceptions of the General, who, going by military maps, described plans of operations which Mr. Kendal could hardly believe he had not found in history, while he could as little credit that Mr. Kendal had neither studied tactics, nor seen the spots of which he could tell such serviceable minutiae.
They had their heads together over the map the whole evening, and the next morning, when the General began to ask questions about Turkish, his sister was proud to hear her husband answering with the directness and precision dear to a military man.
‘That’s an uncommonly learned man, Albinia’s husband,’ began the General, as soon as he had started with his brother on a round of errands.
‘I never met a man of more profound and universal knowledge.’
‘I don’t see that he is so grave and unlike other people. Fred reported that he was silence itself, and she might as well have married Hamlet’s ghost.’
‘Fred saw him at a party,’ said Maurice; then remembering that this might not be explanatory, he added, ‘He shines most when at ease, and every year since his marriage has improved and enlivened him.’