doesn't observe _me_," he said to himself; "if he did he
would see, he wouldn't think----!" The end of this private cogitation
was a vague impatience of all the things his venerable host took for
granted. He didn't see any of the things Nick saw. Some of these latter
were the light touches the summer morning scattered through the sweet
old garden. The time passed there a good deal as if it were sitting
still with a plaid under its feet while Mr. Carteret distilled a little
more of the wisdom he had laid up in his fifty years. This immense term
had something fabulous and monstrous for Nick, who wondered whether it
were the sort of thing his companion supposed _he_ had gone in for. It
was not strange Mr. Carteret should be different; he might originally
have been more--well, to himself Nick was not obliged to phrase it: what
our young man meant was more of what it was perceptible to him that his
old friend was not. Should even he, Nick, be like that at the end of
fifty years? What Mr. Carteret was so good as to expect for him was that
he should be much more distinguished; and wouldn't this exactly mean
much more like that? Of course Nick heard some things he had heard
before; as for instance the circumstances that had originally led the
old man to settle at Beauclere. He had been returned for that
borough--it was his second seat--in years far remote, and had come to
live there because he then had a conscientious conviction, modified
indeed by later experience, that a member should be constantly resident.
He spoke of this now, smiling rosily, as he might have spoken of some
wild aberration of his youth; yet he called Nick's attention to the fact
that he still so far clung to his conviction as to hold--though of what
might be urged on the other side he was perfectly aware--that a
representative should at least be as resident as possible. This gave
Nick an opening for something that had been on and off his lips all the
morning.

"According to that I ought to take up my abode at Harsh."

"In the measure of the convenient I shouldn't be sorry to see you do
it."

"It ought to be rather convenient," Nick largely smiled. "I've got a
piece of news for you which I've kept, as one keeps that sort of
thing--for it's very good--till the last." He waited a little to see if
Mr. Carteret would guess, and at first thought nothing would come of
this. But after resting his young-looking eyes on him for a moment the
old man said:

"I s