"I haven't the slightest doubt as to your liking him," said Miss Bridgeman, decisively. "He has spent his life for the most part in cities--and in good society. That I gather from your aunt's account of him. He is sure to be much more interesting and agreeable than the young men who live near here, whose ideas are, for the most part, strictly local. But I very much doubt his liking Mount Royal, for more than one week." "Jessie," cried Christabel, indignantly, "how can he help liking _this_?" She waved her stick across the autumn landscape, describing a circle which included the gold and bronze hills, the shadowy gorges, the bold headlands curving away to Hartland on one side, to Tintagel on the other--Lundy Island a dim line of dun colour on the horizon. "No doubt he will think it beautiful--in the abstract. He will rave about it, compare it with the Scottish Highlands--with Wales--with Kerry, declare these Cornish hills the crowning glory of Britain. But in three days he will begin to detest a place where there is only one post out and in, and where he has to wait till next day for his morning paper." "What can he want with newspapers; if he is enjoying his life with us? I am sure there are books enough at Mount Royal. He need not expire for want of something to read." "Do you suppose that books--the best and noblest that ever were written--can make up to a man for the loss of his daily paper? If you do, offer a man Shakespeare when he is looking for the _Daily Telegraph_, or Chaucer when he wants his _Times_, and see what he will say to you. Men don't want to read now-a-days, but to know--to be posted in the very latest movements of their fellow-men all over the universe. Reuter's column is all anybody really cares for in the paper. The leaders and the criticism are only so much padding to fill the sheet. People would be better pleased if there were nothing but telegrams." "A man who only reads newspapers must be a most vapid companion," said Christabel. "Hardly, for he must be brim full of facts." "I abhor facts. Well, if Mr. Hamleigh is that kind of person, I hope he may be tired of the Mount in less than a week." She was silent and thoughtful as they went home by the monastic churchyard in the hollow, the winding lane, and steep village street. Jessie had a message to carry to one of Mrs. Tregonell's pensioners, who lived in a cottage in the lane; but Christabel, who was generally pleased to show her fair young face in such abodes, waited outside on this occasion, and stood in a profound reverie, digging the point of her stick into the loose earth of the mossy bank in front of her, and seriously damaging the landscape.