"Ha, ha! he answers to his new name already!" she cried in delight,
clapping her hands. "What a clever little boy he is! He's a deal
cleverer than the pony was when we changed _its_ name! But then, to be
sure, the pony never properly knew its first name either."
Suddenly she became grave, and put her fingers on the young gentleman's
arm. "Charley," she said, "this must be a secret between us two, because
if grandmamma found out, she might be angry with me, you know. But you
like to be called Charley, don't you? isn't it nice?"
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
ARTISTIC INTOXICATION.
The London architect who was charged with the restoration of Wenderholme
gave advice which could not be followed without a heavy outlay; but in
this respect he was surpassed by Colonel Stanburne's amateur adviser,
Mr. Prigley, whose imagination revelled in the splendors of an ideal
Elizabethan interior, full of carving and tapestry, and all manner of
barbaric magnificence. Where the architect would have been content with
paper, Mr. Prigley insisted upon wainscot; and where the architect
admitted plain panelling, the clergyman would have it carved in fanciful
little arches, or imitations of folded napkins, or shields of arms, or
large medallion portraits of the kings of England, or bas-reliefs of
history or the chase.
Only consider what Mr. Prigley's tastes and circumstances had been, and
what a painful contradiction had ever subsisted between them! He had an
intense passion for art--not for painting or sculpture in their
independent form, for of these he knew little--but Mr. Prigley loved
architecture mainly, and then all the other arts as they could help the
effect of architecture. With these tastes he lived in a degree of
poverty which utterly forbade any practical realization of them, and
surrounded by buildings of which it is enough to say that they
represented the taste of the inhabitants of Shayton. The ugliest towns
in the world are English towns--the ugliest towns in England are in the
manufacturing district--the ugliest town in the manufacturing district
was the one consigned to Mr. Prigley's spiritual care. Here his
artistic tastes dwelt in a state of suppression, like Jack-in-the-box.
Colonel Stanburne had imprudently unfastened the lid; it flew open, and
Jack sprang up with a suddenness and an energy that was positively
startling and alarming.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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