"You say true," said he, musing.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
"Julian Winstanley——"
"He who won the steeple-chase yesterday? Who, in the name of goodness, is Julian Winstanley? A name of some pretension; yet nobody seems to know where he came from."
"Oh dear, that is quite a mistake. I beg your pardon—everybody knows where he came from. This bird of gay plumage was hatched in a dusky hole and corner of the city; where his grandfather made a fabulous fortune by gambling in the funds."
"He is as handsome a young fellow as ever was hatched from a muckworm."
"He is a careless, dashing prodigal, whatever else; and I never look at him without thinking of Hogarth's picture of the 'Miser's Heir.' What say you to him, Blake, with your considering face? Come, out with your wisdom! You can make a sermon out of a stone, you know."
"May be so. A stone might furnish matter for discourse, as well as other things; but I am not in the humor for preaching to-day. I can't help being sorry for the scapegrace."
"So like you, Contradiction! Sorry for him! And, pray, what for?—because he is the handsomest, most aristocratical-looking person one almost ever met with—because he is really clever, and can do whatever he pleases in no time (might have taken a double-first at Oxford easily, Penrose says, if he would)—or because he has got countless heaps of gold at his banker's; and nobody to ask him a why or a wherefore; may do, in all things, just what he likes—or because he can drink like a fish, dance like Vestris, ride like Chiffney; be up all night and about all day, and never tire, be never out of spirits, never dull? Harry Blake! Who'll come and hear Harry Blake? He is going to give his reasons, why a man who has every good thing of the world is most especially to be pitied."
"I am going to do no such thing. The reasons are too obvious. I deal not in truisms."