"Good."
Here the conversation dropped for some time. I had found and restrapped the knapsack, and we were near the lodge, when Mr Trevanion said, abruptly, "Talk, my young friend: talk, I like to hear you talk—it refreshes me. Nobody has talked naturally to me these last ten years."
The request was a complete damper to my ingenuous eloquence: I could not have talked naturally now for the life of me.
"I made a mistake, I see," said my companion, good-humouredly, noticing my embarrassment. "Here we are at the lodge. The coach will be bye in five minutes: you can spend that time in hearing the old woman praise the Hogtons and abuse me. And hark you, sir, never care three straws for praise or blame—leather and prunella! praise and blame are here!" and he struck his hand upon his breast, with almost passionate emphasis. "Take a specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place; uneducated and miserly; their land a wilderness, their village, a pig-stye. I come, with capital and intelligence; I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I civilise all around me: no merit in me—I am but a type of capital guided by education—a machine. And yet the old woman is not the only one who will hint to you that the Hogtons were angels, and myself the usual antithesis to angels. And what is more, sir, because that old woman, who has ten shillings a-week from me, sets her heart upon earning her sixpences—and I give her that privileged luxury—every visitor she talks with goes away with the idea that I, the rich Mr Trevanion, let her starve on what she can pick up from the sight-seers. Now, does that signify a jot?
"Good-bye. Tell your father his old friend must see him; profit by his calm wisdom: his old friend is a fool sometimes, and sad at heart. When you are settled, send me a line to St James's Square, to say where you are.
"Humph! that's enough."
Mr Trevanion wrung my hand, and strode off.
I did not wait for the coach, but proceeded towards the turn-stile, where the old woman, (who had either seen, or scented from a distance, that tizzy of which I was the impersonation)—
"Hush'd in grim repose, did wait her morning prey."
My opinions as to her sufferings, and the virtues of the departed Hogtons, somewhat modified, I contented myself with dropping into her open palm the exact sum virtually agreed on. But that palm still remained open, and the fingers of the other clawed hold of me as I stood, impounded in the curve of the turn-stile, like a cork in a patent cork-screw.