abruptly, and walked up to the grim pescator del
onda, with an outstretched hand, and a smile of encouragement, and
immediately fell into confidential talk with him.

'The minds of anglers,' says the gentle Colonel Robert Venables, 'be
usually more calm and composed than many others; when he hath the worst
success he loseth but a hook or line, or perhaps what he never
possessed, a fish; and suppose he should take nothing, yet he enjoyeth a
delightful walk by pleasant rivers, in sweet pastures, amongst
odoriferous flowers, which gratify his senses and delight his mind; and
if example, which is the best proof, may sway anything, I know no sort
of men less subject to melancholy than anglers.' It was only natural,
then, that Dangerfield should be serene and sunny.

Aunt Becky led him a little walk twice or thrice up and down. She seemed
grave, earnest, and lofty, and he grinned and chatted after his wont
energetically, to stout Captain Cluffe's considerable uneasiness and
mortification. He had seen Dangerfield the day before, through his
field-glass, from the high wooded grounds in the park, across the river,
walk slowly for a good while under the poplars in the meadow at Belmont,
beside Aunt Becky, in high chat; and there was something particular and
earnest in their manner, which made him uncomfortable then. And fat
Captain Cluffe's gall rose and nearly choked him, and; he cursed
Dangerfield in the bottom of his corpulent, greedy soul, and wondered
what fiend had sent that scheming old land-agent three hundred miles out
of his way, on purpose to interfere with his little interests, as if
there were not plenty of--of--well!--rich old women--in London. And he
bethought him of the price of the cockatoo and the probable cost of the
pelican, rejoinders to Dangerfield's contributions to Aunt Rebecca's
menagerie, for those birds were not to be had for nothing; and Cluffe,
who loved money as well, at least, as any man in his Majesty's service,
would have seen the two tribes as extinct as the dodo, before he would
have expended sixpence upon such tom-foolery, had it not been for
Dangerfield's investments in animated nature. 'The hound! as if two
could not play at that game.' But he had an uneasy and bitter
presentiment that they were birds of paradise, and fifty other cursed
birds beside, and that in this costly competition Dangerfield could take
a flight beyond and above him; and he thought of the flagitious waste of
money, and