Which contains Some Hints towards the Making of a Baronet
A door opened, and the echoing tramp of feet on the carpetless boards of the corridor outside ushered the entrance of two men into a large room, wholly devoid of furnishment—the plaster of its walls as bare as its ceiling and floor.
The short, stout, red-faced man shut the door with a slam that resounded through the empty place, thrust his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and said with pride:
“Now, sir; how do you call that for a stoodio!”
In the fading daylight the younger man, dandified, self-possessed, deliberate, dressed in the severest high fashion of the day, stepped to the end of the great empty place and surveyed it calmly:
“Ah, Mr. Malahide—it is the sort of room I should delight to furnish as I liked—and then live in it,” he said; and he sighed: “I have the palatial instincts.”
He spoke with a charm of accent and of manner that drew the frank admiration of the vulgar other; indeed, the stout Mr. Malahide was looking at a handsome young Englishman in all the first graceful vigour of early manhood—for Bartholomew Doome’s lithe slender build gave him an easy carriage of the body that told of well-knit strength, and put aside the hint of effeminacy suggested by the great beauty of the head. As the stout man had said to his wife this very morning: “You could find it in your heart to stroke him down with yer ’and, like a dam race-’orse.”
Mr. Malahide pushed his silk hat back upon his florid head and looked thereby even more vulgar than his Maker had intended him:
“Well,” said he—“ye like it, eh, sir?”
The smile still flickered about Bartholomew Doome’s lips: