[The Disowned Complete by Edward Bulwer-Lytton]@TWC D-Link bookThe Disowned Complete CHAPTER XI 3/5
We have a very pretty little collection of books here, Mr.Linden, if you would like to read an hour or two after breakfast,--child, take your hands out of your pockets,--all the best English classics I believe,--'Telemachus,' and Young's 'Night Thoughts,' and 'Joseph Andrews,' and the 'Spectator,' and Pope's Iliad, and Creech's Lucretius; but you will look over them yourself! This is Liberty Hall, as well as Copperas Bower, Mr.Linden!" "Well, my love," said the stock-jobber, "I believe I must be off.
Here Tom," Tom (Mr.de Warens had just entered the room with some more hot water, to weaken still further "the poor remains of what was once"-- the tea!), "Tom, just run out and stop the coach; it will be by in five minutes." "Have not I prayed and besought you, many and many a time, Mr. Copperas," said the lady, rebukingly, "not to call De Warens by his Christian name? Don't you know that all people in genteel life, who only keep one servant, invariably call him by his surname, as if he were the butler, you know ?" "Now, that is too good, my love," said Copperas.
"I will call poor Tom by any surname you please, but I really can't pass him off for a butler! Ha--ha--ha--you must excuse me there, my love!" "And pray, why not, Mr.Copperas? I have known many a butler bungle more at a cork than he does; and pray tell me who did you ever see wait better at dinner ?" "He wait at dinner, my love! it is not he who waits." "Who then, Mr.Copperas ?" "Why we, my love; it's we who wait for dinner; but that's the cook's fault, not his." "Pshaw! Mr.Copperas; Adolphus, my love, sit upright, darling." Here De Warens cried from the bottom of the stairs,--"Measter, the coach be coming up." "There won't be room for it to turn then," said the facetious Mr. Copperas, looking round the apartment as if he took the words literally. "What coach is it, boy ?" Now that was not the age in which coaches scoured the city every half hour, and Mr.Copperas knew the name of the coach as well as he knew his own. "It be the Swallow coach, sir." "Oh, very well: then since I have swallowed in the roll, I will now roll in the Swallow--ha--ha--ha! Good-by, Mr.Linden." No sooner had the witty stock-jobber left the room than Mrs.Copperas seemed to expand into a new existence.
"My husband, sir," said she, apologetically, "is so odd, but he's an excellent sterling character; and that, you know, Mr.Linden, tells more in the bosom of a family than all the shining qualities which captivate the imagination.
I am sure, Mr.Linden, that the moralist is right in admonishing us to prefer the gold to the tinsel.
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