“I am not a nice-looking old man, my dear, am I?” he said, leering at Isabel with cunning, half-closed eyes. “Bless your heart! you’ll soon get used to me! You see, I am the sort of color, as they say at the linen-drapers, that doesn’t wash well. It’s all through love; upon my life it is! Early in the present century I had my young affections blighted; and I’ve neglected myself ever since. Disappointment takes different forms, miss, in different men. I don’t think I have had heart enough to brush my hair for the last fifty years. She was a magnificent woman, Mr. Moody, and she dropped me like a hot potato. Dreadful! dreadful! Let us pursue this painful subject no further. Ha! here’s a pretty country! Here’s a nice blue sky! I admire the country, miss; I see so little of it, you know. Have you any objection to walk along into the fields? The fields, my dear, bring out all the poetry of my nature. Where’s the dog? Here, Puggy! Puggy! hunt about, my man, and find some dog-grass. Does his inside good, you know, after a meat diet in London. Lord! how I feel my spirits rising in this fine air! Does my complexion look any brighter, miss? Will you run a race with me, Mr. Moody, or will you oblige me with a back at leap-frog? I’m not mad, my dear young lady; I’m only merry. I live, you see, in the London stink; and the smell of the hedges and the wild flowers is too much for me at first. It gets into my head, it does. I’m drunk! As I live by bread, I’m drunk on fresh air! Oh! what a jolly day! Oh! how young and innocent I do feel!” Here his innocence got the better of him, and he began to sing, “I wish I were a little fly, in my love’s bosom for to lie!” “Hullo! here we are on the nice soft grass! and, oh, my gracious! there’s a bank running down into a hollow! I can’t stand that, you know. Mr. Moody, hold my hat, and take the greatest care of it. Here goes for a roll down the bank!” He handed his horrible hat to the astonished Moody, laid himself flat on the top of the bank, and deliberately rolled down it, exactly as he might have done when he was a boy. The tails of his long gray coat flew madly in the wind: the dog pursued him, jumping over him, and barking with delight; he shouted and screamed in answer to the dog as he rolled over and over faster and faster; and, when he got up, on the level ground, and called out cheerfully to his companions standing above him, “I say, you two, I feel twenty years younger already!”--human gravity could hold out no longer. The sad and silent Moody smiled, and Isabel burst into fits of laughter. “There,” he said “didn’t I tell you you would get used to me, Miss? There’s a deal of life left in the old man yet--isn’t there? Shy me down my hat, Mr. Moody. And now we’ll get to business!” He turned round to the dog still barking at his heels. “Business, Puggy!” he called out sharply, and Puggy instantly shut up his mouth, and said no more.