"Make it so. I should like some dinner as soon as possible, and one of my bro——of Sir Adrian's best bottles. It's a poor heart that never rejoices. Meanwhile, I want to inspect your ruins and your caves in detail, if you will pilot me, Renny. This is a handy sort of an old Robinson Crusoe place for hiding and storing, is it not?"
CHAPTER XIX
A JUNIOR'S OPINION
A rarely failing characteristic of very warm-hearted and strongly impulsive people is their inability of graduating their likes and dislikes; a state of mind which cannot fail to lead to frequent alterations of temper.
On more than one occasion, since the domineering old lady had started upon her peregrinations, had her favour for the two brothers undergone reversal; but the ground Rupert gained by Adrian's offences was never of safe tenure. At the present hour, under the elation of her victorious sally upon the hermit's pessimistic entrenchments—the only thing in him of which she disapproved—he at once resumed the warm place she liked to keep for him in her heart. And as a consequence "Master Rupert," as she contemptuously called the "locum tenens Squire," who, in the genealogical order of things, should have been a person of small importance, fell promptly into his original state of disgrace.
During the drive from the village (where she had ordered the carriage to await her return) to the gates of Pulwick, Miss O'Donoghue entertained her companion with an indignant account of his brother's ingratitude, of his hypocritical insinuating method of disparagement of Sir Adrian himself, winding up each indictment with a shrewd, "but he could not impose upon me," which, indeed, she firmly believed.
Her object was, of course, to strengthen the baronet in his resolve to return to the headship of his family—little guessing what a strong incentive to seclusion these very tales of a state of things he suspected but too well would have proved, had it not been for the new unforeseen motive that the morning's revelation had brought.
"Does Molly know of your visit to me?" he asked, as the carriage halted before the gate, and the enormous, red-headed Cumbrian gatekeeper with his rosy Moggie, proudly swung it open to stand on either side, the one bowing with jubilant greeting and the other curtseying with bashful smiles at the real master. "Does she expect my visit?" relapsing into gravity after returning the salutation in kindliness.