“Oh, the sw—; why shouldn’t I say it right out?—the swells you mean; but we are not swells in my place. We enjoy ourselves with all our hearts.”
“I am sorry you think it so dull in the country,” said poor Wat. “I wish you liked it better. If you had been brought up here, like me—but of course that is impossible. Perhaps when you get better used to it—”
“I shall never be used to it; I am on the outlook, don’t you know? for some one to take me back.”
“Don’t say that,” said Walter, “it hurts me so. I should like to reconcile you to this place, to make you fond of it, so that you should prefer to stay here.”
“With whom? with old Crockford?” she said.
Walter was very young, and trembled with the great flood of feeling that came over him. “Oh, if I had only a palace, a castle, anything that was good enough for you! but I have nothing—nothing you would care for. That is what makes it odious beyond description, what makes it more than I can bear.”
“What is more than you can bear?”
“Losing Penton,” cried the young man; “I told you. If Penton were still to be mine I know what I should say. It is not a cottage like Crockford’s, nor a poor muddy sort of place like the Hook. It is a house worthy even of such as you. But I am like the disinherited knight, I have nothing till I work for it.”
“That is a great pity,” she said; “I have seen Penton; it is a beautiful place. It seems silly, if you have a right to it, to give it up.”
“You think so too!” he cried; “I might have known you would have thought so; but I am only my father’s son, and they don’t consult me. If I had any one to stand by me I might have resisted—any one else, whose fortune was bound up in it as well as mine.”