“Perfectly correct—perfectly”—(still reading).
“Are you a well-grown youth for your age?”
“I am.”
“Of an interesting physiognomy?”
Here the malicious madman grinned at me in the most laughable manner, over the devoted head of the ancient lord.
“I hope you will think so, my lord, when I have recovered my usual looks.”
“Ugh—hum—ha—of dark brown hair, approaching to black?”
“With intensely black eyes.”
“No.”—“Yes.” Mine was the negative, Captain Reud’s the affirmative, spoken simultaneously.
At this crisis his lordship had made a very proper and theatrical start. Captain Reud grasped the glass with both hands; and the severe, bright eye of Dr Thompson fell upon the prank-playing captain. The effect was instantaneous: he slunk away from his intended mischief; completely subdued. The fire left his eye, the grin his countenance; and he stood beside his lordship in a moment, the quiet and gentlemanly post-captain, deferentially polite in the presence of his superior. I understood the thing in a moment—it was the keeper and his patient.