Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

RANFORD. 29
his face. His dress was wondrously neat, and Charles, looking
on him, guessed, with a boy's tact, that he was a man of mark.
"Whose son did you say he was, General?" said the stranger.
" Curly's!" said Mainwaring, stopping and smiling.
" No, really!" said the other; and then he looked fixedly at
Charles, and began to laugh, and Charley, seeing nothing better
to do, looked up at the gray eyes and laughed too, and this made
thle stranger worse; and then, to crown the joke, the General
began to laugh too, though none of them had said a syllable more
than what I have written down; and at last the ridiculous exhibition finished up by the old gentleman taking a great pinch of snuff
from a gold box, and turning away.
Charles was much puzzled, and was still more so when, in an
hour's time, having dressed himself, and being on his way downstairs to his aunt's room, who had just come in, he was stopped
on a landing by this same old gentleman, beautifully dressed for
dinner, who looked on him as before.
He didn't laugh this time, but he did worse. He utterly
" dumbfoundered" Charley, by asking, abruptly, —
" How's Jim?"
" He is very well, thank you, sir.' His wife Norah nursed me
when mamma died."
" 0, indeed," said the other; "so he has n't cut your father's
throat yet, or anything of that sort? "
"0 dear, no," said Charles, horrified; "bless you, what can
make you think of such things? Why, he is the kindest man in
the world."
" I don't know," said the old gentleman, thoughtfully; "that
excessively faithful kind of creature is very apt to do that sort of
thing. I should discharge any servant of mine who exhibited the
slightest symptoms of affection, as a dangerous lunatic"; with
which villanous sentiment he departed.
Charles thought what a strange old gentleman he was for a
short time, and then slid down the banisters. They were better
banisters than those at Ravenshoe, being not so steep, and longer:
so he went up, and slid down again; * after which he knocked at
his aunt's door.
It was with a beating heart that he waited for an answer.
Cuthbert had described Lady Ascot as such a horrid old ogress,
that he was not without surprise when a cheery voice said, "Come
in," and, entering a handsome room, he found himself in presence
of a noble-looking old lady, with gray hair, who was netting in an
upright, old-fashioned chair.
"So you are Charles Ravenshoe, eh?" she began. "Why,
* The best banisters for sliding down are broad'oak ones, with a rib in the
middle. This new narrow sort, which is coming in, are wretched.