I hope you have good stabling and plenty of room. My ponies
and Mistress Henriette's Arab horse will be here to-morrow. I doubt I shall
have to build a place for my hawks; but I suppose Sir John will find me a
cottage for my Dutch falconer."
"Lord, how the young master do talk!" exclaimed Reuben, with an admiring
grin.
The boy was so rapid in his speech, had such vivacity and courage in his
face, such a spring in every movement, as if he had quicksilver in his
veins, Reuben thought; but it was only the quicksilver of youth, that
Divine ichor which lasts for so brief a season.
"It made me feel twenty years younger only to hear him prattle," Reuben
said afterwards.
Sir John and his daughter had come to meet the children by this time,
and there were fond embracings, in the midst of which Henriette withdrew
herself from her grandfather's arms, and retired a couple of paces, in
order to drop him the Jennings curtsy, sinking almost to the ground, and
then rising from billows of silk, like Venus from the sea, and handing
him a letter, with a circular sweep of her arm, learnt in London from her
Parisian dancing mistress, an apprentice of St. Andre's, not from the
shabby little French cut-caper from Oxford.
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