“Don’t know as to that, your honour--much of a muchness. I have seen Master Aram, demure as he looks, start, and bite his lip, and change colour, and frown--he has an ugly frown, I can tell ye--when he thought no one nigh. A man who gets in a passion with himself may be soon out of temper with others. Free to confess, I should not like to see him married to that stately beautiful young lady--but they do gossip about it in the village. If it is not true, better put the Squire on his guard--false rumours often beget truths--beg pardon, your honour--no business of mine--baugh! But I’m a lone man, who have seen the world, and I thinks on the things around me, and I turns over the quid--now on this side, now on the other--‘tis my way, Sir--and--but I offend your honour.” “Not at all; I know you are an honest man, Bunting, and well affected to our family; at the same time it is neither prudent nor charitable to speak harshly of our neighbours without sufficient cause. And really you seem to me to be a little hasty in your judgment of a man so inoffensive in his habits and so justly and generally esteemed as Mr. Aram.” “May be, Sir--may be,--very right what you say. But I thinks what I thinks all the same; and indeed, it is a thing that puzzles me, how that strange-looking vagabond, as frighted the ladies so, and who, Miss Nelly told me, for she saw them in his pocket, carried pistols about him, as if he had been among cannibals and hottentots, instead of the peaceablest county that man ever set foot in, should boast of his friendship with this larned schollard, and pass a whole night in his house. Birds of a feather flock together--augh!--Sir!” “A man cannot surely be answerable for the respectability of all his acquaintances, even though he feel obliged to offer them the accommodation of a night’s shelter.” “Baugh!” grunted the Corporal. “Seen the world, Sir--seen the world--young gentlemen are always so good-natured; ‘tis a pity, that the more one sees the more suspicious one grows. One does not have gumption till one has been properly cheated--one must be made a fool very often in order not to be fooled at last!” “Well, Corporal, I shall now have opportunities enough of profiting by experience. I am going to leave Grassdale in a few days, and learn suspicion and wisdom in the great world.” “Augh! baugh!--what?” cried the Corporal, starting from the contemplative air which he had hitherto assumed. “The great world?--how?--when?--going away;--who goes with your honour?” “My honour’s self; I have no companion, unless you like to attend me;” said Walter, jestingly--but the Corporal affected, with his natural shrewdness, to take the proposition in earnest.