CHAPTER II

SHE

Papa never will cease to meet with accidents and adventures. If he only
walks out to sit for half an hour with one of his old dames, as he calls
them, something is sure to happen to him, and it is almost as sure that
Mr. Pollingray will be passing at the time and mixed up in it.

Since Mr. Pollingray's return from his last residence on the Continent, I
have learnt to know him and like him. Charles is unjust to his uncle. He
is not at all the grave kind of man I expected from Charles's
description. He is extremely entertaining, and then he understands the
world, and I like to hear him talk, he is so unpretentious and uses just
the right words. No one would imagine his age, from his appearance, and
he has more fun than any young man I have listened to.

But, I am convinced I have discovered his weakness. It is my fatal.
peculiarity that I cannot be with people ten minutes without seeing some
point about them where they are tenderest. Mr. Pollingray wants to be
thought quite youthful. He can bear any amount of fatigue; he is always
fresh and a delightful companion; but you cannot get him to show even a
shadow of exhaustion or to admit that he ever knew what it was to lie
down beaten. This is really to pretend that he is superhuman. I like him
so much that I could wish him superior to such--it is nothing other
than--vanity. Which is worse? A young man giving himself the air of a
sage, or--but no one can call Mr. Pollingray an old man. He is a
confirmed bachelor. That puts the case. Charles, when he says of him that
he is a 'gentleman in a good state of preservation,' means to be
ironical. I doubt whether Charles at fifty would object to have the same
said of Mr. Charles Everett. Mr. Pollingray has always looked to his
health. He has not been disappointed. I am sure he was always very good.
But, whatever he was, he is now very pleasant, and he does not talk to
women as if he thought them singular, and feel timid, I mean, confused,
as some men show that they feel--the good ones. Perhaps he felt so once,
and that is why he is still free. Charles's dread that his uncle will
marry is most unworthy. He never will, but why should he not? Mama
declares that he is waiting for a woman of intellect, I can hear her:
'Depend upon it, a woman of intellect will marry Dayton Manor.' Should
that mighty event not come to pass, poor Charles will have to sink the
name of Everett in that of Pollingray. Mr. Pollingray'