"I am very glad to hear my good opinion of him confirmed by one who has seen so much of him."
And, rising, he left the room.
"A very good young man, this seems to be," he thought to himself, as he did so.
"Amiable, good natured, and all that; but very soft, for a man who has seen hard service," thought Morton, on his part.
The party reassembled in the inn parlor. Masters William and Marlborough, having gained a reprieve from their banishment, busied themselves at the table, the one in poring over Brewster on Natural Magic, the other in solving a problem of Euclid. Leslie viewed these infant diversions by no means with an eye of favor, and soon banished the students to a retirement more suited to their tender years. The sentence overcame all their philosophy, and they were carried off howling.
Morton, meanwhile, was breathing a charmed air; and though diffident in the presence of ladies, and not liberally endowed by nature with the gift of tongues, his zeal to commend himself to the good opinion of Miss Edith Leslie availed somewhat to supply the defect. He had never mixed with the world, conventionally so called, and knew as much of ladies as of mermaids. But having an ardent temperament and a Quixotic imagination; being addicted, moreover, to Froissart and kindred writers; and, indeed, visited with a glimmering of that antique light which modern folly despises, he would have been ready, with the eye of a handsome woman upon him, for any rash and ridiculous exploit. This extravagance did him no manner of harm. On the contrary, it went far to keep him out of mischief; for in the breast of this youngster a chivalresque instinct battled against the urgency of vigorous blood, and taught his nervous energies to seek escape rather in ceaseless bodily exercises, rowing, riding, and the like, than in any less commendable recreations.
The close of the evening found him with an imagination much excited. In short, decisive symptoms declared themselves of that wide-spread malady, of which he had read much and pondered not a little, but which had not, as yet, numbered him among its victims. Among the various emotions, novel, strange, and pleasurable, which began to possess him, came, however, the dismal consciousness that, with the morning sun, the enchantress of his fancy was to vanish like a dream of the night.
CHAPTER IV.
| What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it From action and adventure?—Cymbeline. |