"I wish you would send me your boy, will you? Not the eldest: the Protestant one. Perhaps he mayn't be such an insufferable coxcomb as his brother."
At which letter Densil shook his honest sides with uproarious laughter. "Cuthbert, my boy," he said, "you have won your dear aunt's heart entirely; though she, being determined to mortify the flesh with its affection, does not propose seeing you again, but asks for Charley. The candour of that dear old lady increases with her age. You seem to have been making your court, too, father; she speaks of your smile in the most unqualified terms."
"Her ladyship must do me the honour to quiz me," said Mackworth. "If it is possible to judge by her eye, she must like me about as well as a mad dog."
"For my part, father," said Cuthbert, curling up the corners of his thin lips sardonically, "I shall be highly content to leave my dear aunt in the peaceable enjoyment of her favourite society of grooms, horse-jockeys, blacklegs, dissenting ministers, and such-like. A month in that house, my dear Charley, will qualify you for a billiard-marker; and, after a course of six weeks, you will be fit to take the situation of croupier in a low hell on a race-course. How you will enjoy yourself, my dear!"
"Steady, Cuthbert steady," said his father; "I can't allow you to talk like that about your cousin's house. It is a great house for field sports, but there is not a better conducted house in the kingdom."
Cuthbert lay over the sofa to fondle a cat, and then continued speaking very deliberately, in a slightly louder voice,—
"I will allow my aunt to be the most polite, intellectual, delicate-minded old lady in creation, my dearest father, if you wish it; only, not having been born (I beg her pardon, dropped) in a racing stable, as she was herself, I can hardly appreciate her conversation always. As for my cousin, I consider him a splendid sample of an hereditary legislator. Charley, dear, you won't go to church on Sunday afternoon at Ranford; you will go into the croft with your cousin Ascot to see the chickens fed. Ascot is very curious in his poultry, particularly on Sunday afternoon. Father, why does he cut all the cocks' tails square?"
"Pooh, pooh," said Densil, "what matter? many do it, besides him. Don't you be squeamish, Cuthbert—though, mind you, I don't defend cock-fighting on Sunday."
Cuthbert laughed and departed, taking his cat with him.
Charles had a long coach journey of one day, and then an awful and wonderful journey on the Great Western Railway as far as Twyford—alighting at which place, he was accosted by a pleasant-looking, fresh-coloured boy, dressed in close-fitting cord trousers, a blue handkerchief, spotted with white, and a Scotch cap; who said—