“What would my mother and Laura say to this, I wonder?” thought the lad. Indeed old Pendennis’s morals were not their morals, nor was his wisdom theirs.
This affecting conversation between uncle and nephew had scarcely concluded, when Warrington came out of his bedroom, no longer in rags, but dressed like a gentleman, straight and tall and perfectly frank and good-humoured. He did the honours of his ragged sitting-room with as much ease as if it had been the finest apartment in London. And queer rooms they were in which the Major found his nephew. The carpet was full of holes—the table stained with many circles of Warrington’s previous ale-pots. There was a small library of law-books, books of poetry, and of mathematics, of which he was very fond. (He had been one of the hardest livers and hardest readers of his time at Oxbridge, where the name of Stunning Warrington was yet famous for beating bargemen, pulling matches, winning prizes, and drinking milk-punch.) A print of the old college hung up over the mantelpiece, and some battered volumes of Plato, bearing its well-known arms, were on the book-shelves. There were two easy-chairs; a standing reading-desk piled with bills; a couple of very meagre briefs on a broken-legged study-table. Indeed, there was scarcely any article of furniture that had not been in the wars, and was not wounded. “Look here, sir, here is Pen’s room. He is a dandy, and has got curtains to his bed, and wears shiny boots, and a silver dressing-case.” Indeed, Pen’s room was rather coquettishly arranged, and a couple of neat prints of opera-dancers, besides a drawing of Fairoaks, hung on the walls. In Warrington’s room there was scarcely any article of furniture, save a great shower-bath, and a heap of books by the bedside: where he lay upon straw like Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe, and read half through the night his favourite poetry or mathematics.
When he had completed his simple toilette, Mr. Warrington came out of this room, and proceeded to the cupboard to search for his breakfast.
“Might I offer you a mutton-chop, sir? We cook ’em ourselves hot and hot: and I am teaching Pen the first principles of law, cooking, and morality at the same time. He’s a lazy beggar, sir, and too much of a dandy.”
And so saying, Mr. Warrington wiped a gridiron with a piece of paper, put it on the fire, and on it two mutton-chops, and took from the cupboard a couple of plates and some knives and silver forks, and castors.
“Say but a word, Major Pendennis,” he said; “there’s another chop in the cupboard, or Pidgeon shall go out and get you anything you like.”
Major Pendennis sate in wonder and amusement, but he said he had just breakfasted, and wouldn’t have any lunch. So Warrington cooked the chops, and popped them hissing hot upon the plates.
Pen fell to at his chop with a good appetite, after looking up at his uncle, and seeing that gentleman was still in good-humour.
“You see, sir,” Warrington said, “Mrs. Flanagan isn’t here to do ’em, and we can’t employ the boy, for the little beggar is all day occupied cleaning Pen’s boots. And now for another swig at the beer. Pen drinks tea; it’s only fit for old women.”
“And so you were at Lady Whiston’s last night,” the Major said, not in truth knowing what observation to make to this rough diamond.