"
"There you wrong me, my good young friend--on my credit, you do. Were I
to resort to adulation, I must strain the points of compliment to find
phrases that should come up to my opinion of your good looks; and as to
my friendly disposition towards you, I have already said that your
attentions have won it, so that mere good nature does not prompt my
words. I speak of you, as I think. May I, without appearing too
inquisitive, ask from what part of the country you come?"
"I am from Norfolk, worthy Sir," the young man answered, "where my life
has been spent among a set of men wild and uncouth, and fond of the
chase as the Sherwood archers we read of in the ballads. I am the son of
a broken gentleman; the lord of a ruined house; with one old servant
left me out of fifty kept by my father, and with scarce a hundred acres
that I can still call my own, out of the thousands swept away from me.
Still I hunt in my father's woods; kill my father's deer; and fish in my
father's lakes; since no one molests me. And I keep up the little church
near the old tumble-down hall, in which are the tombs of my ancestors,
and where my father lies buried; and the tenantry come there yet on
Sundays, though I am no longer their master; and my father's old
chaplain, Sir Oliver, still preaches there, though my father's son can
no longer maintain him."
"A sad change, truly," Sir Francis said, in a tone of sympathy, and with
a look of well-feigned concern; "and attributable, I much fear, to riot
and profusion on the part of your father, who so beggared his son.
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