Miss Barrtngton waited with impatience for Conyers's appearance at
the breakfast-table,--she had received such a pleasant note from her
brother, and she was so eager to read it. That notion of imparting some
conception of a dear friend by reading his own words to a stranger is
a very natural one. It serves so readily to corroborate all we have
already said, to fill up that picture of which wo have but given the
mere outline, not to speak of the inexplicable charm there is in being
able to say, “Here is the man without reserve or disguise; here he is in
all the freshness and warmth of genuine feeling; no tricks of style, no
turning of phrases to mar the honest expression of his nature. You see
him as we see him.”
“My brother is coming home, Mr. Conyers; he will be here to-day. Here
is his note,” said Miss Dinah, as she shook hands with her guest “I must
read it for you:--
“'At last, my dear Dinah--at last I am free, and, with all my love of
law and lawyers, right glad to turn my steps homeward. Not but I
have had a most brilliant week of it; dined with my old schoolfellow
Longmore, now Chief Baron, and was the honored guest of the “Home
Circuit,” not to speak of one glorious evening with a club called the
“Unbriefed,” the pleasantest dogs that ever made good speeches for
nothing!--an amount of dissipation upon which I can well retire and live
for the next twelve months. How strange it seems to me to be once more
in the “world,” and listening to scores of things in which I have no
personal interest; how small it makes my own daily life appear, but how
secure and how homelike, Dinah! You have often heard me grumbling over
the decline of social agreeability, and the dearth of those pleasant
speeches that could set the table in a roar. You shall never hear the
same complaint from me again. These fellows are just as good as their
fathers. If I missed anything, it was that glitter of scholarship, that
classical turn which in the olden day elevated table-talk, and made it
racy with the smart aphorisms and happy conceits of those who, even over
their wine, were poets and orators. But perhaps I am not quite fair
even in this. At all events, I am not going to disparage those who have
brought back to my old age some of the pleasant memories of my youth,
and satisfied me that even yet I have a heart for those social joys I
once loved so dearly!
“'And we have won our suit, Dinah,--at least, a juror was withdrawn by
consent,--and Brazier agrees to an arbitration as to the Moyalty lands,
the whole of Clanebrach and Barrymaquilty property being released from
the sequestration.'
“This is all personal matter, and technical besides,” said Miss
Barrington; “so I skip it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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