as he saw him watch Hickes cutting his
food. Mrs Transome thought with some bitterness that Harold showed more feeling
for her feeble husband who had never cared in the least about him, than for her,
who had given him more than the usual share of mother's love. An hour after
dinner, Harold, who had already been turning over the leaves of his mother's
account-books, said -
    »I shall just cross the park to the parsonage to see my uncle Lingon.«
    »Very well. He can answer more questions for you.«
    »Yes,« said Harold, quite deaf to the innuendo, and accepting the words as a
simple statement of the fact. »I want to hear all about the game and the North
Loamshire Hunt. I'm fond of sport; we had a great deal of it at Smyrna, and it
keeps down my fat.«
    The Reverend John Lingon became very talkative over his second bottle of
port, which was opened on his nephew's arrival. He was not curious about the
manners of Smyrna, or about Harold's experience, but he unbosomed himself very
freely as to what he himself liked and disliked, which of the farmers he
suspected of killing the foxes, what game he had bagged that very morning, what
spot he would recommend as a new cover, and the comparative flatness of all
existing sport compared with cock-fighting, under which Old England had been
prosperous and glorious, while, so far as he could see, it had gained little by
the abolition of a practice which sharpened the faculties of men, gratified the
instincts of the fowl, and carried out the designs of heaven in its admirable
device of spurs. From these main topics which made his points of departure and
return, he rambled easily enough at any new suggestion or query; so that when
Harold got home at a late hour, he was conscious of having gathered from amidst
the pompous full-toned triviality of his uncle's chat some impressions which
were of practical importance. Among the rector's dislikes, it appeared, was Mr
Matthew Jermyn.
    »A fat-handed, glib-tongued fellow, with a scented cambric handkerchief; one
of your educated low-bred fellows; a foundling who got his Latin for nothing at
Christ's Hospital; one of your middle-class upstarts who want to rank with
gentlemen, and think they'll do it with kid gloves and new furniture.«
    But since Harold meant to stand for the county, Mr Lingon was equally
emphatic as to the necessity of his