Need it be added that the request was no sooner made than granted?
To the letter, with infinite tact, Cosmo (as I shall show in a moment) carried out those instructions which he knew so well to be to the advantage, not only of Mr Barnett, his benefactor, but of himself, his family, and indeed the whole Empire. He was chosen to bring into just those relations which the situation demanded, his father, and that accomplished politician whose impoverishment, dignity, and judgment it has been my tragic, but not unpleasing task, to recall in the chapter which I now close.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Dublin Almanack and Register, vol. xiv. p. 26; also Rolls, Anno xxti 4 etc., Dubl. Reg. ff.
[8] The “Pettifogging Attorney” of Grattan’s tirade. As a fact he was a fairly prosperous young man with offices at a rental of £40 a year, and already the mortgagee of two public-houses.
CHAPTER VI
Cosmo was too well acquainted with his father’s temper, and, withal, too devoted a son to shock Mr Burden by any sudden introduction of matters upon which the merchant must be presumed to judge far better than he.
It was a beautiful thing—and a striking thing in these days of irreverence and haste—to watch the delicate and modulated steps whereby my old friend was brought, almost without his knowing it, to the brink of the M’Korio. It was a process of that mingled affection and reserve by which we daily see the young leading the aged towards larger things, but one which no mere written description can fully convey.
The young man would leave a book of Major Pondo’s in the hall by accident; Mr Burden would pick it up under the impression that it was a work of fiction: he would grow sufficiently interested in it to take it into town with him; he would remark the half-tone blocks representing the dryer parts of the delta: he would turn it sideways to glance at the map of the river mouths; he would glance with pleasure at the footnotes which referred him to Scripture—and when he brought home the book Cosmo would forget its origin, but would remember at last that it had been lent him by the son of Sir Samuel Gare.
Had Cosmo any notes to write to Mr Barnett or to Mr Harbury, he was careful to write them in his father’s house, to address them to their offices, and to fling them at random upon the hall table whence they should be picked up and posted; for his father hated disorder, and, scolding, would catch them up himself.