less
than a se'nnight away. For I had heard my grandfather say that the elder
Mr. Dix had a house in some merchant's suburb, and loved to play at being
a squire before he died. Again (my heart stood at the thought), the
Manners might be gone back to America. I cursed the stubborn pride which
had led the captain to hire a post-chaise, when the wagon had served us
so much better, and besides relieved him of the fusillade of ridicule he
got travelling as a gentleman. But such reflections always ended in my
upbraiding myself for blaming him whose generosity had rescued me from
perhaps a life-long misery.

But, on the whole, we rolled southward happily, between high walls and
hedges, past trim gardens and fields and meadows, and I marvelled at the
regular, park-like look of the country, as though stamped from one design
continually recurring, like our butter at Carvel Hall. The roads were
sometimes good, and sometimes as execrable as a colonial byway in winter,
with mud up to the axles. And yet, my heart went out to this country,
the home of my ancestors. Spring was at hand; the ploughboys whistled
between the furrows, the larks circled overhead, and the lilacs were
cautiously pushing forth their noses. The air was heavy with the perfume
of living things.

The welcome we got at our various stopping-places was often scanty
indeed, and more than once we were told to go farther down the street,
that the inn was full. And I may as well confess that my mind was
troubled about John Paul. Despite all I could say, he would go to the
best hotels in the larger towns, declaring that there we should meet the
people of fashion. Nor was his eagerness damped when he discovered that
such people never came to the ordinary, but were served in their own
rooms by their own servants.

"I shall know them yet," he would vow, as we started off of a morning,
after having seen no more of my Lord than his liveries below stairs.
"Am I not a gentleman in all but birth, Richard? And that is a
difficulty many before me have overcome. I have the classics, and the
history, and the poets. And the French language, though I have never
made the grand tour. I flatter myself that my tone might be worse. By
the help of your friends, I shall have a title or two for acquaintances
before I leave London; and when my money is gone, there is a shipowner I
know of who will give me employment, if I have not obtained preferment."

The desire to meet persons of birth wa