“The lad seems to have some humour,” was the senior Weir’s reflection upon this epistle. “‘British institutions’ is rather droll. And if his style seems a trifle stiff in the joints, that only results from youth and a legal education. I trust to Providence, though, that he mayn’t have LL. B. engraved upon his card;—these Americans are capable of anything. However I shall be glad to see him.”
And he began to picture pleasantly to himself the fun that awaited him in having a well set-up young man of five and twenty, whose pockets were full of money (the maternal grandfather saw to that, thank goodness), to knock about with; and he looked forward almost eagerly to the 8th of June. They would finish the season in town together, and afterwards do a round of country houses, and then make for the Continent: and, taking one consideration with another, it would be a tremendous lark. That Harold was well set-up he knew from a photograph. His only fear on the score of appearance concerned his colouring. That might be trying. However, he would hope not; and anyhow, in this world we must take the bitter with the sweet.
He went to Euston (having had due telegraphic warning from Liverpool) to welcome the youth on the platform; and he didn’t quite know whether to be pleased or dismayed when he saw him step from a third-class compartment of the train. It was rather smart than otherwise to travel third-class, of course; but how could a young American, fresh from democracy, be aware of this somewhat recondite canon of aristocratic manners? and might the circumstance not argue, therefore, parsimony or a vulgar taste?
He had no doubt at all, however, about the nature of the emotion that Harold’s hat aroused in him; for not only was it a “topper,” but—as if travelling from Liverpool in a topper weren’t in itself enough—it had to be a topper of an outlandish, un-English model; and he shuddered to speculate for what plebeian provincial thing people might have been mistaking this last fruit of his gentle family tree. He hurried the hat’s wearer out of sight, accordingly, into his brougham, and gave the word to drive.
“But my baggage?” cried the son.
“Oh, my man will stop behind and look after that. Give him your receipt.”
His hat apart, Harold was really a very presentable fellow, tall and broad-shouldered, with a clear eye, a healthy brown skin, and a generous allowance of well-cropped brown hair; and on the whole he wasn’t badly dressed: so that his father’s heart began to warm to him at once. His cheeks and lips were shaven clean, like an actor’s or a priest’s, whereby a certain rigidity was imparted to the lines of his mouth. He held himself rather rigidly too, and bolt upright: but as his father had noticed a somewhat similar effect in the bearing of a good many unexceptionable young Oxford and Cambridge men, he put it down to the fashion of a generation, and didn’t allow it to distress him.
“I had no idea you kept a carriage,” Harold remarked, after an interval.
“Oh, I should ruin myself in cab-fares, you know,” Weir explained.
“I presume London is a pretty dear city?”