“Yes, that’s true enough,” he said; “for instance, I wouldn’t advise this small shaver” (indicating with a motion of the eyelid Hugh, who sat watching him with breathless astonishment) “to trust himself across country outside a horse; but when one has come to—ahem! years of discretion, and learned how to take care of oneself,—the purpose for which divines tell us we are sent into the world,—why the more hunting one gets the jollier, I say.”
“Have you ever been out hunting yourself, may I ask?” inquired Ernest, fixing his penetrating glance full on the boy’s countenance; who, despite his fastness, was not, when asked a straightforward question, prepared to tell an actual lie, though to adhere to the exact truth would have made his previous remarks appear singularly inconsistent and uncalled for; accordingly he answered—
“Ar—well—yes—oh! of course I’ve been out hunting—ah—not exactly on horseback, perhaps, but it’s just the same thing, you know;—what a shocking slow train this is, to be sure!——they hardly do their five-and-thirty miles an hour; I shall certainly write to the Times about it, if they don’t mind what they’re at.”
During this speech Hugh’s sharp eyes had deciphered the direction on the important writing-desk, containing the jewellery and the incalculable number of £500 notes, and he promulgated the result of his discovery thus:—
“‘Wilfred J. Goldsmith, Esquire:’ what! are you our cousin Wilfred? why I took you for a gentleman!”
“Oh, Hugh!” exclaimed Percy, scandalised at his brother’s rudeness.
“No, I don’t mean that,” continued Hugh quickly, while-Ernest turned away his head to hide an irrepressible smile; “I mean, I took you for a grown up gentleman, and not a boy like Percy, you know.”
This involuntary tribute to the man-about-town-like adultness-of his manners and appearance delighted Wilfred Jacob more than the most elaborate compliment courtier could have devised; at length he had found some one to believe in him, and to take him at his own valuation, and he adopted and steadily patronised Hugh from that time forth. He was much too wide awake, however, to allow this to appear; replying in the off-hand; manner which he affected—
“Rather an equivocal compliment that, young’un; but I expect it was better meant than expressed: so I’ll take the will for the deed, as the lawyer’s clerk did after he’d mixed the ‘dog’s-nose’ rather too still at his early dinner. ‘Always give credit for good intentions,’ is a copy old Splitnib (so called from an analogy between his professional avocations, and the fact of his having, in by-gone hours, fallen over a form, and divided the bridge of his own proboscis) will set you writing before you are many days older; and in me you behold a living embodiment of the precept.”
“How was it we did not see you at the station, Cousin: Wilfred?” inquired Percy; “we waited as long as we dared, till we thought we should lose the train looking for you.”