“Sit down, Mrs. Hibbert,” he said, nodding towards an ordinary chair, and including Walter in the nod. “I dare say you’ll be glad of your food before you look at specimens. I shall,” and he gave a lumbering laugh. “I have done a hard morning’s work.”
“I am sure you must be very tired,” Florence said politely, wishing Aunt Anne would return.
He seemed to know her thoughts, and answered them in an explanatory manner: “Anne won’t be long. She always dresses before we have dinner. Great nonsense, living as we do; but it’s no use my speaking. Do you make a long stay in Brighton, Mr. Hibbert?”
“No, we go back to town to-night.”
“A good thing,” he said, with another lumbering laugh; “Brighton is a horrible place to my mind, and the sooner one leaves it the better. That pier, with its band and set of idle people, with nothing else to do but to walk up and down;—well, it’s my opinion that railways have done a vast deal of mischief and mighty little good to make up for it. The same thing can be said of newspapers. What good do they do?”
Walter felt that this sudden turn upon the Press was a little hard on him, but he looked up over his moustache with laughter in his eyes, and wondered what would come next. Florence was almost angry. Aunt Anne’s husband was very rude, she thought, and she determined to come to the rescue.
“But you were reading a paper,” she said, and tried to see the name of one that Mr. Baines had thrown down beside his chair.
“Oh, yes; I like to try and find out what mischief they are going to do next. If I had my way they should only be published monthly, if at all. All they do is to try and set people by the ears.”
“But they tell us the news.”
“Well, and what better are we for that? I don’t want to know that a man was hanged last week, and a prince will be married to-morrow; I only waste my time reading about them when I might be usefully employed minding my own business.”