“I promised Bennett to look in. He wants me to dine with him to-morrow.”
“That’s very well for young fellows like you, but don’t accept for me. If I go off the premises we shall be having Anthony Miles up here with an infallible compound for destroying caterpillars and all the plants into the bargain. I shall administer a lecture to-day, when he brings Miss Winifred.”
“Get her to do it.”
“I’m half afraid she does it too much already. It seems to me that love-making is more altered than leap-frog since our day, Charles,—Well, well, some things don’t change, and luckily luncheon is a permanent institution. Come, and spare Mrs Jones’s feelings.”
“I am losing my appetite,” said Mr Mannering, sighing.
“Come in, at all events.” And, with a little show of reluctance on the part of the elder, the brothers walked off to the long dining-room lying on one side of the library, and looking out upon the cheerful and sunny garden which had somehow caught the spirit of Robert Mannering’s kindliness.
Chapter Two.
“So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.”
In Memoriam.