"I'll tell you what, sir," said I, emptying what remained in the decanter into my glass, and swallowing it with a desperate energy befitting the occasion, "I'll stay up the Christmas vacation and read."
"The deuce will you! Why, Frank," continued the governor, sorely puzzled, "you know your cousins are coming here to spend the Christmas, and I thought we should all make a merry party. Why can't you read a little at home? You can get up something earlier, you know—much better for your health—and have two hours or so clear before breakfast—no time like the morning for reading—and then have all the day to yourself afterwards. Eh, why not, Frank?"
"If you'll allow me to ring for another bottle of this Madeira, sir, (I declare I think it's better than our senior common-room have, and they don't consider theirs small-beer,) I'll tell you.——I never could read at home, sir; it's not in the nature of things."
"I doubt whether it's much in your nature to read any where, Frank: I confess I don't see much signs of it when you are here."
"In the first place, sir, I should never have a room to myself."
"Why, there's the library for you all day long, Frank; I'm sure I don't trouble it much."
"Why, sir, in these days, if there are any young ladies in the house, they take to the library as a matter of course: it's the regular place for love-making: mammas don't follow them into the company of folios and quartos while there are three volumes of the last novel on the drawing-room table; and the atmosphere is sentimentality itself; they mark favourite passages, and sigh illustrations."
"Precious dusty work, Frank, flirtations among my book-shelves must be; but I suppose the girls don't go much beyond the bindings: they don't expect to get husbands by being blue."
"Not exactly, sir; reviews and title-pages constitute a good part of modern literary acquirements. But upon my honour, sir, one hears young ladies now talk of nothing but architecture and divinity. Botany is quite gone out; and music, unless there's a twang of Papistry about it, is generally voted a bore. In my younger days—(really, sir, you needn't laugh, for I haven't had a love affair these two years)—in my younger days, when one talked about similarity of tastes and so forth, it meant that both parties loved moonlight, hated quadrilles, adored Moore's Melodies, and were learning German; now, nine girls out of ten have a passion for speculative divinity and social regeneration."
"Ay, one sort of nonsense does just as well for them as another: your cousin Sophy bothers me to build an Elizabethan pigsty, and wanted her poor mother to dance with the butler in the servants' hall last Christmas, when the fellow was as drunk as an owl: I hope it mayn't end in her figuring off herself with the footman; for Sophy is rather a pet of mine, and a right-down English girl after all. But, Frank, if you can't read in peace in the library, you surely could have a room fitted up for yourself up stairs; and you shall have the great reading-desk, with lights, that was your grandfather's, that stands in my little sanctum; (he made more use of it, poor man, than I do;) or I don't know but what I might spare you the little room itself, if it would suit you—eh?"