left it, but they seemed so fond of each
other, I thought it was a pity to part them, and that I could promise it
should be welcome here; eh, mamma?'

'Certainly. I am very glad you brought it.'

'We are to have his horse and man in a little while. A beautiful
chestnut--anything to raise his spirits. He is terribly cut up about his
grandfather.

It was now time to go down to dinner; and after Charles had made faces
of weariness and disgust at all the viands proposed to him by his
mother, almost imploring him to like them, and had at last ungraciously
given her leave to send what he could not quite say he disliked, he was
left to carry on his teasing of Charlotte, and his grumbling over the
dinner, for about the space of an hour, when Amabel came back to him,
and Charlotte went down.

'Hum!' he exclaimed. 'Another swan of my father's.'

'Did not you like his looks?'

'I saw only an angular hobbetyhoy.'

'But every one at Redclyffe speaks so well of him.'

'As if the same things were not said of every heir to more acres than
brains! However, I could have swallowed everything but the disposition
to adore Philip. Either it was gammon on his part, or else the work of
my father's imagination.'

'For shame, Charlie.'

'Is it within the bounds of probability that he should be willing, at
the bidding of his guardian, to adopt as Mentor his very correct and
sententious cousin, a poor subaltern, and the next in the entail? Depend
upon it, it is a fiction created either by papa's hopes or Philip's
self-complacency, or else the unfortunate youth must have been brought
very low by strait-lacing and milk-and-water.'

'Mr. Thorndale is willing to look up to Philip,'

'I don't think the Thorndale swan very--very much better than a tame
goose,' said Charles, 'but the coalition is not so monstrous in his
case, since Philip was a friend of his own picking and choosing, and
so his father's adoption did not succeed in repelling him. But that
Morville should receive this "young man's companion," on the word of a
guardian whom he never set eyes on before, is too incredible--utterly
mythical I assure you, Amy. And how did you get on at dinner?'

'Oh, the dog is the most delightful creature I ever saw, so sensible and
well-mannered.'

'It was of the man that I asked.'

'He said hardly anything, and sometimes started if papa spoke to him
suddenly. He winced as if he could not bear to be called Sir Guy, so
papa said we should