Busy as he was with his own affairs, Henderson wrote to the great horse-watcher, and receiving reply by telegraph, met him at Feltham the following afternoon; and after showing him all over his own places, brought him to supper with us at my uncle’s cottage at nine o’clock, as had been arranged in the morning. And it was as good as a play—as we express it—and better than most of the French plays now in vogue, to see my solid uncle, with his English contempt for a spy, and strong habit of speaking his mind, yet doing his utmost to be hospitable, and checking himself in his blunt deliveries, and catching up any words that might be too honest for the convenience of his visitor. He told me afterwards that he felt like a rogue, and was afraid of sitting square to his own table. The visitor, however, did not in the least appreciate these exertions, or even perceive their existence. He was perfectly contented with his own moral state, and although he said little, I could almost have believed that he regarded my good uncle with as much superiority, as was felt—but not shown—towards himself. And his principal ambition was to take in a good supper. Being concerned more than all the rest in his qualities, I observed him closely, and became disappointed when he said nothing of any particular astuteness. But perhaps, like most men who have to work their brains hard, he allowed them a holiday when off duty, and cared very little what was thought of them then, if they came up to the scratch at signal. And although he said little, what he said was to the point, and he did not expend great ability in proving, as most men do, that two and two make four. His outer man was of such puny build, that when he sat by my uncle’s elbow, it seemed as if he might have jumped into the big pocket, wherein the fruit-grower was wont to carry a hammer, a stick of string, a twist of bast, a spectacle-case full of wall-nails, a peach-knife, a pair of clips, a little copper wire, and a few other things to suit the season, according to its latest needs. Tony Tonks glanced every now and then with great curiosity at my uncle, and at this pocket which was hanging with its weight under the arm of a curved Windsor chair; as a fisherman likes to see his bag hang down, but only once in his lifetime has that pleasure. But though Tony Tonks might go (more readily than the fish who won’t come at all) into that pocket, Nature had provided him with compensation for his want of magnitude. There never lived a very small man yet, who was not in his own opinion big. Great qualities combine in him, of mind and soul, and even of the body for the sake of paradox; so that no one knows what he can amount to, but himself. And as the looking-glass presents us with ourselves set wrong; so the mirror of the man who weighs but half the proper weight, may exalt him to the ceiling, if he slopes it to his mind.