Here Blanche came stepping up with her most fascinating smile and ogle, and begged dear Laura to come and take the second in a song. Laura was ready to do anything good-natured, and went to the piano; by which Mr. Pynsent listened as long as the duet lasted, and until Miss Amory began for herself, when he strode away.
“What a nice, frank, amiable, well-bred girl that is, Wagg,” said Mr. Pynsent to a gentleman who had come over with him from Baymouth—“the tall one, I mean, with the ringlets and red lips—monstrous red, ain’t they?”
“What do you think of the girl of the house?” asked Wagg.
“I think she’s a lean, scraggy humbug,” said Mr. Pynsent, with great candour. “She drags her shoulders out of her dress, she never lets her eyes alone: and she goes simpering and ogling about like a French waiting-maid.
“Pynsent, be civil,” cried the other, “somebody can hear.”
“Oh, it’s Pendennis of Boniface,” Mr. Pynsent said. “Fine evening, Mr. Pendennis; we were just talking of your charming cousin.”
“Any relation to my old friend, Major Pendennis?” asked Mr. Wagg.
“His nephew. Had the pleasure of meeting you at Gaunt House,” Mr. Pen said with his very best air—the acquaintance between the gentlemen was made in an instant.
In the afternoon of the next day, the two gentlemen who were staying at Clavering Park were found by Mr. Pen on his return from a fishing excursion, in which he had no sport, seated in his mother’s drawing-room in comfortable conversation with the widow and her ward. Mr. Pynsent, tall and gaunt, with large red whiskers and an imposing tuft to his chin, was striding over a chair in the intimate neighbourhood of Miss Laura. She was amused by his talk, which was simple, straightforward, rather humorous and keen, and interspersed with homely expressions of a style which is sometimes called slang. It was the first specimen of a young London dandy that Laura had seen or heard: for she had been but a chit at the time of Mr. Foker’s introduction at Fairoaks, nor indeed was that ingenuous gentleman much more than a boy, and his refinement was only that of a school and college.
Mr. Wagg, as he entered the Fairoaks premises with his companion, eyed and noted everything. “Old gardener,” he said, seeing Mr. John at the lodge—“old red livery waistcoat—clothes hanging out to dry on the gooseberry-bushes—blue aprons, white ducks—gad, they must be young Pendennis’s white ducks—nobody else wears ’em in the family. Rather a shy place for a sucking county member, ay, Pynsent?”