“Yes.”
“Do you set any particular value on my advice?”
“Certainly!”
“And you cultivate social relations with Farnaby and family, notwithstanding?”
“I have motives for being friendly with them, which—which I haven’t had time to explain to you yet.”
Rufus stretched out his long legs on the floor, and fixed his shrewd grave eyes steadily on Amelius.
“My friend,” he said, quietly, “in respect of personal appearance and pleasing elasticity of spirits, I find you altered for the worse, I do. It may be Liver, or it may be Love. I reckon, now I think of it, you’re too young yet for Liver. It’s the brown miss—that’s what ‘tis. I hate that girl, sir, by instinct.”
“A nice way of talking of a young lady you never saw!” Amelius broke out.
Rufus smiled grimly. “Go ahead!” he said. “If you can get vent in quarrelling with me, go ahead, my son.”
He looked round the room again, with his hands in his pockets, whistling. Descending to the table in due course of time, his quick eye detected a photograph placed on the open writing desk which Amelius had been using earlier in the day. Before it was possible to stop him, the photograph was in his hand. “I believe I’ve got her likeness,” he announced. “I do assure you I take pleasure in making her acquaintance in this sort of way. Well, now, I declare she’s a columnar creature! Yes, sir; I do justice to your native produce—your fine fleshy beef-fed English girl. But I tell you this: after a child or two, that sort runs to fat, and you find you have married more of her than you bargained for. To what lengths may you have proceeded, Amelius, with this splendid and spanking person?”