grandest style: it imposed
greatly on the young scholar. Waife might have been a duke in disguise;
but I will do the angler the justice to say that such discovery of rank
would have impressed him little more in the vagrant's favour. It had
been that impromptu "grace"--that thanksgiving which the scholar felt
was for something more than the carnal food--which had first commanded
his respect and wakened his interest. Then that innocent careless
talk--part uttered to dog and child, part soliloquized, part thrown out
to the ears of the lively teeming Nature--had touched a somewhat kindred
chord in the angler's soul; for he was somewhat of a poet and much of a
soliloquist, and could confer with Nature, nor feel that impediment
in speech which obstructed his intercourse with men. Having thus far
indicated that oral defect in our new acquaintance, the reader will
cheerfully excuse me for not enforcing it over much. Let it be among
the things _subaudita_, as the sense of it gave to a gifted and aspiring
nature, thwarted in the sublime career of Preacher, an exquisite
mournful pain. And I no more like to raise a laugh at his infirmity
behind his back, than I should before his pale, powerful, melancholy
face; therefore I suppress the infirmity in giving the reply.

OXONIAN.--"On the other side the lane, where the garden slopes downward,
is my father's house. This ground is his property certainly, but he puts
it to its best use, in lending it to those who so piously acknowledge
that Father from whom all good comes. Your child, I presume, sir?"

"My grandchild."

"She seems delicate: I hope you have not far to go?"

"Not very far, thank you, sir. But my little girl looks more delicate
than she is. You are not tired, darling?"

"Oh, not at all!" There was no mistaking the looks of real love
interchanged between the old man and the child; the scholar felt much
interested and somewhat puzzled.

"Who and what could they be? so unlike foot wayfarers!" On the other
hand, too, Waife took a liking to the courteous young man, and conceived
a sincere pity for his physical affliction. But he did not for those
reasons depart from the discreet caution he had prescribed to himself in
seeking new fortunes and shunning old perils, so he turned the subject.

"You are an angler, sir? I suppose the trout in the stream run small?"

"Not very: a little higher up I have caught them at four pounds weight."

WAIFE.--"There goes a fine fish yonde