As I
have said before, he was always a popular man at dinner-parties. His
amount of intelligence and accomplishment was rare in ---shire, and if it
required more wine than formerly to bring his conversation up to the
desired point of range and brilliancy, wine was not an article spared or
grudged at the county dinner-tables. Occasionally his business took him
up to London. Hurried as these journeys might be, he never returned
without a new game, a new toy of some kind, to "make home pleasant to his
little maid," as he expressed himself.
He liked, too, to see what was doing in art, or in literature; and as he
gave pretty extensive orders for anything he admired, he was almost sure
to be followed down to Hamley by one or two packages or parcels, the
arrival and opening of which began soon to form the pleasant epochs in
Ellinor's grave though happy life.
The only person of his own standing with whom Mr. Wilkins kept up any
intercourse in Hamley was the new clergyman, a bachelor, about his own
age, a learned man, a fellow of his college, whose first claim on Mr.
Wilkins's attention was the fact that he had been travelling-bachelor for
his university, and had consequently been on the Continent about the very
same two years that Mr. Wilkins had been there; and although they had
never met, yet they had many common acquaintances and common
recollections to talk over of this period, which, after all, had been
about the most bright and hopeful of Mr.
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