"Ah, sir! my mother will be so uneasy if I am not in town to-night."
"Pooh!" said the member, "I'll send an express."
I hesitated. "You see, sir, that my father and mother are both new to London: and, though I am new too, yet they may want me--I may be of use." Lady Ellinor put her hand on my head, and sleeked down my hair as I spoke.
"Right, young man, right: you will do in the world, wrong as that is. I don't mean that you'll _succeed_, as the rogues say--that's another question; but, if you don't rise, you'll not fall. Now, put on your hat and come with me; we'll walk to the lodge--you will be in time for a coach."
I took my leave of Lady Ellinor, and longed to say something, about compliments to Miss Fanny; but the words stuck in my throat, and my host seemed impatient.
"We must see you soon again!" said Lady Ellinor kindly, as she followed us to the door.
Mr Trevanion walked on briskly and in silence--one hand in his bosom, the other swinging carelessly a thick walking-stick.
"But I must go round by the bridge," said I, "for I forgot my knapsack. I put it off when I made my leap, and the old lady certainly never took charge of it."
"You know Latin and Greek as they know them at schools, I suppose."
"Why, my father is fastidious; however, he owns that he is satisfied on the whole."
Here the conversation dropped for some time. I had found and restrapped the knapsack, and we were near the lodge, when Mr Trevanion said, abruptly, "Talk, my young friend: talk, I like to hear you talk--it refreshes me. Nobody has talked naturally to me these last ten years."
The request was a complete damper to my ingenuous eloquence: I could not have talked naturally now for the life of me.
"I made a mistake, I see," said my companion, good-humouredly, noticing my embarrassment. "Here we are at the lodge. The coach will be bye in five minutes: you can spend that time in hearing the old woman praise the Hogtons and abuse me. And hark you, sir, never care three straws for praise or blame--leather and prunella! praise and blame are _here_!" and he struck his hand upon his breast, with almost passionate emphasis. "Take a specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place; uneducated and miserly; their land a wilderness, their village, a pig-stye. I come, with capital and intelligence; I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I civilise all around me: no merit in me--I am but a type of capital guided by education--a machine. And yet the old woman is not the only one who will hint to you that the Hogtons were angels, and myself the usual antithesis to angels. And what is more, sir, because that old woman, who has ten shillings a-week from me, sets her heart upon earning her sixpences--and I give her that privileged luxury--every visitor she talks with goes away with the idea that I, the rich Mr Trevanion, let her starve on what she can pick up from the sight-seers. Now, does that signify a jot?