He did not omit to leave the newspaper on the breakfast table, so folded carelessly as to present, among other things, whatever journalists might have printed that morning upon M’Korian matters: to the astonishment and delight of his father he took to rising at an hour earlier than the rest of the household, that he might have the advantage of reading the news in full before his father should come downstairs; but on those third or fourth days, when the M’Korio was given a leading article, he would keep the newspaper throughout the meal, until his father was in a hunger for it and would read it the more keenly. With something approaching art he spoke, and always spoke in praise, of whatever small parcels had been invoiced from the office for this apparently unimportant branch of the firm’s business, but affected (wisely I think) to ignore their destination; now presuming that they were for China, now actually causing their misdirection, and again mispronouncing the name when his father reminded him. He showed a curious anxiety with regard to a trade gun which Mr Burden had received as a sample from Birmingham. He was especially interested in the coats of mail; it was he who suggested to the Society for the Promotion of Biblical Knowledge that they would do well to write to a firm which penetrated the interior of the country, and yet he who asked his father from whom such letters came and what reply should be given them. In the commonest topics of conversation, this atmosphere prevailed. If his father spoke of cricket, Cosmo would remember the curious aversion shown to that game by the son of Lord Benthorpe, an aversion that had amused rather than annoyed so excellent a bowler as Hagbourne, Mr Barnett’s friend.... The match had been played on Mr Harbury’s ground. If his father mentioned a club, it either was or was not a club to which Charles Benthorpe or Major Pondo belonged. Wine recalled the fact that it could not be drunk in the tropics; whisky reminded him that it had been declared by such authorities as Sir George Mackintosh and Lord Bannochry to be the healthiest beverage for pioneers in the valleys of African rivers. Nevertheless when, after a few weeks of this treatment, his father himself spoke directly of the M’Korio, most obviously betraying a mixture of authority and interest, Cosmo with exquisite consideration turned the conversation into almost any other channel, and commonly fell to talking of his undergraduate friends, of Imperial geography, or of Mr Barnett’s great intimacy with, and salutary influence upon, the resident members of the University.