Yet, who that had ever known ye, could have wished you other than ye were—ye guileless, affectionate, honest, simple creatures? simple both, in spite of all the learning of the one, all the prejudices, whims, irritabilities, and crotchets of the other? There you are both seated on the height of the old Roman camp, with a volume of the Stratagems of Polyœnus, (or is it Frontinus?) open on my father's lap; the sheep grazing in the furrows of the circumvallations; the curious steer gazing at you where it halts in the space whence the Roman cohorts glittered forth. And your boy biographer standing behind you with folded arms; and, as the scholar read or the soldier pointed his cane to each fancied post in the war, filling up the pastoral landscape with the eagles of Agrippa and the scythed cars of Boadicea!
CHAPTER VI.
"It is never the same two hours together in this country," said my Uncle Roland, as, after dinner, or rather after dessert, we joined my mother in the drawing-room.
Indeed, a cold drizzling rain had come on within the last two hours; and, though it was July, it was as chilly as if it had been October. My mother whispered to me, and I went out: in ten minutes more, the logs (for we lived in a wooded country) blazed merrily in the grate. Why could not my mother have rung the bell, and ordered the servant to light a fire? My dear reader, Captain Roland was poor, and he made a capital virtue of economy!
The two brothers drew their chairs near to the hearth: my father at the left, my uncle at the right; and I and my mother sat down to "Fox and geese."
Coffee came in—one cup for the Captain—for the rest of the party avoided that exciting beverage. And on that cup was a picture of—His Grace the Duke of Wellington!
During our visit to the Roman camp, my mother had borrowed Mr Squills's chaise, and driven over to our market town, for the express purpose of greeting the Captain's eyes with the face of his old chief.
My uncle changed colour, rose, lifted my mother's hand to his lips, and sate himself down again in silence.
"I have heard," said the Captain, after a pause, "that the Marquis of Hastings, who is every inch a soldier and a gentleman—and that is saying not a little, for he measures seventy-five inches from the crown to the sole—when he received Louis XVIII. (then an exile) at Donnington, fitted up his apartments exactly like those his majesty had occupied at the Tuilleries—it was a kingly attention, (my Lord Hastings, you know, is sprung from the Plantagenets)—a kingly attention to a king. It cost some money and made some noise. A woman can show the same royal delicacy of heart in this bit of porcelain, and so quietly, that we men all think it a matter of course, brother Austin."
"You are such a worshipper of women, Roland, that it is melancholy to see you single. You must marry again!"