Arnold drew the right inference, this time, from Sir Patrick’s language and Sir Patrick’s tones. He eagerly took up the defense of his friend. “You said that rather bitterly, Sir,” he remarked. “What has Geoffrey done to offend you?” “He presumes to exist--that’s what he has done,” retorted Sir Patrick. “Don’t stare! I am speaking generally. Your friend is the model young Briton of the present time. I don’t like the model young Briton. I don’t see the sense of crowing over him as a superb national production, because he is big and strong, and drinks beer with impunity, and takes a cold shower bath all the year round. There is far too much glorification in England, just now, of the mere physical qualities which an Englishman shares with the savage and the brute. And the ill results are beginning to show themselves already! We are readier than we ever were to practice all that is rough in our national customs, and to excuse all that is violent and brutish in our national acts. Read the popular books--attend the popular amusements; and you will find at the bottom of them all a lessening regard for the gentler graces of civilized life, and a growing admiration for the virtues of the aboriginal Britons!” Arnold listened in blank amazement. He had been the innocent means of relieving Sir Patrick’s mind of an accumulation of social protest, unprovided with an issue for some time past. “How hot you are over it, Sir!” he exclaimed, in irrepressible astonishment. Sir Patrick instantly recovered himself. The genuine wonder expressed in the young man’s face was irresistible. “Almost as hot,” he said, “as if I was cheering at a boat-race, or wrangling over a betting-book--eh? Ah, we were so easily heated when I was a young man! Let’s change the subject. I know nothing to the prejudice of your friend, Mr. Delamayn. It’s the cant of the day,” cried Sir Patrick, relapsing again, “to take these physically-wholesome men for granted as being morally-wholesome men into the bargain. Time will show whether the cant of the day is right.--So you are actually coming back to Lady Lundie’s after a mere flying visit to your own property? I repeat, that is a most extraordinary proceeding on the part of a landed gentleman like you. What’s the attraction here--eh?” Before Arnold could reply Blanche called to him from the lawn. His color rose, and he turned eagerly to go out. Sir Patrick nodded his head with the air of a man who had been answered to his own entire satisfaction. “Oh!” he said, “_that’s_ the attraction, is it?” Arnold’s life at sea had left him singularly ignorant of the ways of the world on shore. Instead of taking the joke, he looked confused. A deeper tinge of color reddened his dark cheeks. “I didn’t say so,” he answered, a little irritably. Sir Patrick lifted two of his white, wrinkled old fingers, and good-humoredly patted the young sailor on the cheek. “Yes you did,” he said. “In red letters.”