'No doubt it was the same. I understand the sister gives music lessons; though at present she is taking a little holiday, staying at the seaside with friends. There is another advantage in these lodgings,' continued Mr Broughton; 'the house being a music warehouse, and one of the family evidently musical, I am in hopes they will not object to my violin-practising any more than to Dandy for an inmate. What I want now is comfort, to enjoy myself after my own fashion, and opportunity of doing some little good in the world, when what seems to me the fitting occasion offers. Five years more at the Antipodes and I might have come home a richer man; but perhaps in that time health would have been shattered by over-toil, and I should have been less able even than now to turn into new grooves of life and resume habits of culture. As it is, my means are ample for all I am likely to want. With books and music and Dandy, I expect to get on capitally. Besides I mean to come and see you pretty often.'
'Indeed I hope you will,' ejaculated husband and wife together.
'If we come too often, they must turn us out—must they not, Dandy?' said Mr Broughton, speaking to and petting his dog; and then he added, turning to his cousin: 'By-the-bye, I ventured to give you as a reference as to my respectability, responsibility, &c.'
'And I will give you a good character, Dick, I promise you,' replied Mrs Woodford; 'and what is more, I will recommend Dandy to Mrs Gray's special regard. He certainly is the cleverest dog I ever saw. Look at him now, wagging his tail at me, as if he understood every word I was saying!'
'Spoken just like the Cousin Maggie of early days,' said Mr Broughton, with a certain tremor in his voice which proved that his feelings were touched. 'Always full of sympathy and thoughtful kindness. Yet even you can hardly tell what a friend Dandy has been to me through years of loneliness.'
'Yes, I can, Dick,' said Mrs Woodford; 'if I had not a pack of children to think about, I am quite sure I should want dogs or four-footed pets of some sort.'
Only a fortnight has passed, but 'Cousin Dick' seems as completely installed in his new lodgings as if he had occupied them for months. His most cherished personal belongings were all unpacked and arranged about his rooms according to his own taste and fancy. A few well-worn books which he had taken from England in his youth, still held a place of honour, though they were now flanked by many fresher-looking volumes; and an old and cherished violin rested in one corner, and helped to give the sitting-room its inhabited look, though writing materials near the window and newspapers lying about, contributed to the effect.
Over the mantel-piece in his bedroom he had arranged his store of warlike weapons—a sword, which Richard Broughton had certainly never used, but which he valued as the gift of a dead friend; pistols and revolver which he had looked on as protectors in many a perilous journey, and a boomerang, brought to England as a curiosity.
Mr Broughton had finished his breakfast, and was enjoying his morning newspaper; but he had been to the opera the night before, and the melody of an air which had delighted him still haunted his ear, and even disturbed the rhythm of the very didactic leading article he was reading. He was not much disturbed by Mrs Gray's knocking at the door; she came, as she usually did every morning, to receive his orders for dinner.