“I’ve been wishing to see you all day,” resumed Leicester, carefully shutting the door and glancing round the room. “Where is your charge?”
“He is with the General,” was the reply. “He likes to have him for half-an-hour every day before he goes to dress; he talks to him, and tries to instil into his mind correct notions regarding things in general, and his own future social position in particular. Walter sits still and listens, but I’m afraid he does not understand much about it.”
“No great loss either, I’ve a notion,” returned Charley irreverently. He paused, whistled a few bars of “Son Geloso,” entangled his spur in the hearthrug, extricated it with much difficulty, then turning abruptly to Lewis, he exclaimed, “Arundel, I’m no hand at making fine speeches, but recollect if ever you want a friend I owe you more than I can possibly repay you. Not that this is such a very uncommon relation for me to stand in towards people,” he added with a smile.
“Nay,” returned Lewis, “you are reversing our positions: I am your debtor for my introduction to this family, and for an amount of kindness and consideration which you must be placed, like myself, in a dependent situation fully to appreciate. But,” he added, glancing at his friend’s happy face, “I hope you have some good new’s to tell me?”
“You are right in your conjecture,” replied Leicester, “but it is mainly owing to your straightforward and sensible advice that I have gained the prize I strove for. I was within an ace of losing it, though;” and he then gave a hasty outline of his day’s adventures, with which the reader has been already made acquainted.
Lewis congratulated him warmly on his good fortune. “You see I was right when I told you Miss Peyton was not so indifferent to you as you imagined,” he said, “and that she liked you, not because you were a man of fashion, the admired of all admirers, but because she had sufficient penetration to discover that you were something more—that you possessed higher and better qualities, and were not——”
“Go on, my dear Arundel,” urged Leicester as Lewis paused, “go on. I like plain speaking when it comes from a friendly mouth.”
“The mere butterfly you strove to appear, I was going to say,” resumed Lewis; “but you will think me strangely impertinent.”
“Not at all,” returned Leicester, “it’s the truth; I can see it plainly now. I’ve taken as much trouble to make myself appear a fool as other men do to gain a reputation for wisdom. Well, it’s never too late to mend. I shall turn over a new leaf from this time forth, give up dress, restrict myself to one cigar a day, moderate my affection for pale ale, invest capital in worsted gloves and a cotton umbrella, and become a regular business character.” He paused, and drawing a chair to the fire, seated himself, and stretching out his legs, subjected his boots, which bore unmistakable traces of his pedestrian episode, to the influence of the blazing wood. Having thus made himself comfortable, he fell into a fit of musing which lasted till, after gazing vacantly at his extended legs for some moments, his features suddenly assumed an eager expression, and he exclaimed, “Confound those blockheads, Schneider & Shears: I suppose if I’ve told them once I’ve told them fifty times to give more room in the leg for riding-trousers. A horse’s back is a wide thing, and of course when you stretch your legs across it you require the trousers to fit sufficiently loosely to accommodate themselves to the position; they need not set like a couple of hop sacks either; the thing’s simple enough. I know if I’d a pair of scissors I could cut them out myself.”
Glancing at Lewis as he spoke, Leicester perceived that he was struggling, not over successfully, to preserve his gravity, and the absurdity of the thing striking him for the first time, he indulged in a hearty laugh at his own expense ere he added, “Heigh-ho! it’s not so easy to get rid of old habits as one imagines. I see it will take me longer to unpuppyise myself than I was aware of. Seriously, however, I don’t mean to continue a mere idler, living on my wife’s fortune. My father has interest with Government, and I shall ask him to push it and obtain for me some creditable appointment or other. He will have no difficulty; the Hon. Charles Leicester, husband to the rich Miss Peyton, will possess much stronger claims upon his country than Charley Leicester the portionless younger son. In this age of humbug it is easy enough to get a thing if you don’t care whether you have it or not; but if you chance to be some poor wretch, to whom the obtaining it is life or death, ten to one but you are done out of it. Poverty is the only unpardonable sin in these days; the worship of the golden calf is a species of idolatry to which Christians are prone as well as Jews. It’s rare to find a sceptic as to that religion, even amongst the most inveterate unbelievers.”