"Oh, I didn't know you had land! you never told me so."
"No, Leon, I am not given to talk about my own private affairs. I was wild as a boy, and my father thought it was well that I should not come into my fortune until I arrived at years of discretion, and he very wisely tied it up so that I could not touch it until then. I don't mean that I shall ever be a great magnate as you are, but I shall have a very nice estate, which will be all the larger for having waited fifteen years for me."
"I am very glad to hear it, very glad; though it does seem to me very hard that you should be kept so long out of it. Still, I am the last who ought to complain, for if you had not been obliged to become a sort of knight-errant I should have lost my sister."
"Nor have I anything to grumble at, though I do wish I had remained at school a couple of years longer and finished my education."
"Education!" Leon laughed; "you must have done with that long ago."
"I am not so old as I look," Arthur said.
"Well, you look as old as I do, anyhow."
"I am not so old by a good many years. I won't tell you how many, for I don't want to be treated like a little boy."
"I don't think I should do that if you said that you were only ten."
"Well, I can tell you, as a great secret, that I am more than ten."