"Depend upon it, we shall not trust you to take your walks alone, unless you have a pedometer which will bear witness to the distance you have done, and which you will be content to submit to our inspection on your return," replied Jessie, sternly.
"I am afraid you are a terribly severe high priestess of this new form of culture," said Mr. Hamleigh, looking up from his teacup with a lazy smile, "almost as bad as the Dweller on the Threshold, in Bulwer's 'Zanoni.'"
"There is a dweller on the threshold of every science and every admirable mode of life, and his name is Idleness," answered Miss Bridgeman.
"The vis inertiæ, the force of letting things alone," said Angus; "yes, that is a tremendous power, nobly exemplified by vestries and boards of works—to say nothing of Cabinets, Bishops, and the High Court of Chancery! I delight in that verse of Scripture, 'Their strength is to sit still.'"
"There shall be very little sitting still for you if you submit yourself to Christabel and me," replied Miss Bridgeman.
"I have never tried the water-cure—the descriptions I have heard from adepts have been too repellent; but I have an idea that this system of yours must be rather worse than hydropathy," said Angus, musingly—evidently very much entertained at the way in which Miss Bridgeman had taken him in hand.
"I was not going to let him pose after Lamartine's poëte mourant, just because his father died of lung disease," said Jessie, ten minutes afterwards, when the warning gong had sounded, and Mr. Hamleigh had gone to his room to dress for dinner, and the two young women were whispering together before the fire, while Mrs. Tregonell indulged in a placid doze.
"Do you think he is consumptive, like his father?" asked Christabel, with a compassionate look; "he has a very delicate appearance."
"Hollow-cheeked, and prematurely old, like a man who has lived on tobacco and brandy-and-soda, and has spent his nights in club-house card-rooms."
"We have no right to suppose that," said Christabel, "since we know really nothing about him."