Part 8 (2/2)
”Certainly not!” he said, with unnecessary warmth. ”I mean here. If I could run down of a Sunday to a beautiful, quiet, old-fas.h.i.+oned place like this, and find myself in my own home, among my own people, I wonder how many Sundays would find me in London? You can't imagine, you have no idea, what it is to live quite alone in London, with no one to turn to but club acquaintances; and I think Sunday is the worst day of all, especially if it is fine weather, and all the people have gone to the country or the seaside to spend the day with their friends.”
”But, Mr. Mangan,” said Miss Francie Wright, gently, ”I am sure, whenever you have a Sunday free like that, we should be only too glad if you would consider us your friends--unless you think the place too dreadfully tedious, as I'm afraid my cousin finds it.”
”It is very kind of you--very,” said he. ”And I know the old doctor and Mrs. Moore like to see me well enough, for I bring down their boy to them; but if I came by myself, I'm afraid they wouldn't care to have an idling, dawdling fellow like me lounging about the place of a Sunday afternoon.”
”Will you come and try, Mr. Mangan?” said she, quietly. ”For Linn's sake alone I know they would be delighted to have you here. And if it is rest and quiet you want, can't we give you the garden and a book?”
”You mustn't put such visions before me,” he said. ”It's too good to be true. I should be sighing for Paradise all through the week and forgetting my work. And shouldn't I hate to wake up on Monday morning and find myself in London!”
”You might wake up on Monday morning, and find yourself in Winstead,”
said she, ”if you would take Linn's room for the night.”
”Ah, no,” he said, ”it isn't for the like of me to try to take Linn's place in any way whatever. He has always had everything--everything seemed to come to him by natural right; and then he has always been such a capital fellow, so modest and unaffected and generous, that n.o.body could ever grudge him his good-fortune. Prince Fortunatus he always has been.”
”In what way, Mr. Mangan?” his companion asked, rather wonderingly.
”In every way. People are fond of him; he wins affection without trying for it; as I say, it all comes to him as if by natural right.”
”Yes, they say he is very popular in London, among those fine folk,”
observed Miss Francie, quite good-naturedly.
”Oh, I wasn't thinking of his fas.h.i.+onable friends,” Mangan rejoined.
”Being made much of by those people doesn't seem to me one of the great gifts of fortune. And yet I wonder it hasn't spoiled him. He doesn't seem the least bit spoiled, does he?”
”Really, I see so little of him,” Miss Francie said, with a smile, ”he honors us with so few visits, that I can hardly tell.”
”No, he is not spoiled--you may take my word for it,” her companion said, with decision. And then he added, ”I suppose he gets too much of that petting; he is kept in such a turmoil of gayety that its evil effects have no time to sink into him. He is too busy--as he said this morning about marrying.”
”What was that, Mr. Mangan?” she asked.
”He said he was too busy to think of getting married.”
”Oh, indeed?” she said, with her eyes directed towards the ground.
”We--we have always been expecting to hear of his being engaged to some young lady--seeing he is made so much of in London--” She could say no more, for now they were arrived at the doctor's house, which was separated from the highway by a little strip of front garden. They pa.s.sed in through the gate and found the door left open for them.
”Well, Miss Savonarola,” said Lionel, as he hung up his hat in the hall and turned to address her, ”how have you been all this time?”
”I have been very well, Mr. Pagan,” said she, smiling.
”And how are all those juvenile Londoners that you've planted about in the cottages?”
”They're getting on nicely, every one of them,” said she, with quite an air of pride; and then she added, ”When is your Munificence going to give me another subscription?”
”Just now, Francie,” was the instant reply. ”How much do you want?”
”As much as ever you can afford,” said she.
He pulled from his pocket a handful of loose coin, and began to pick out the sovereigns. But Miss Francie, with a little touch of her fingers, put the money away.
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