"Mr Tinter will tell you at once which are the copies. You can do that, Mr Tinter?"
"I can guess at the age of the picture, and the name of the painter, if he is a master," replied Mr Tinter.
"Oh! but Mr Howard has some pictures that Sir Thomas Lawrence said were the finest in Europe. Didn't he say so, Mr Howard?"
"Why, ma'am—I think—at least, so I understood him. Didn't Sir Thomas Lawrence praise some of my pictures, aunt?"
"I really don't remember," said Miss Susannah, looking more at Mr Roe than at her nephew.
"Oh, I thought you told us last time we dined here, that Sir Thomas stayed with you weeks at a time, and copied five or six of them himself."
"P'r'aps I knows more of them family portraits," said Mr Roe with a wilful exaggeration of accent and magnanimous contempt of grammar—"than e'er a one on ye."
All eyes were immediately directed to the old man. Mrs Rayleigh, who was a fine lady, and had never seen so queer a specimen of a critic as Mr Roe, was a little alarmed at his uncouth pronunciation. And Mr Gillingham Howard made a feeble and unsuccessful effort to deaden the effect of his remarks.
"My friend is a remarkably good judge of the fine arts, but quite a character. An amazing humourist, and very much given to quizzing. You'll hear what fun he'll make of us all."
"Who is he?" enquired Mrs Rayleigh, in the same confidential whisper.