But she
foresaw that Gilbert would shrink and falter before his father, and
that the conference would lead to no discovery of his views, and she
was not surprised when her husband told her that he could not
understand the boy, and believed that the truth was, that he would
like to do nothing at all. It had ended by Mr. Kendal, in a sort of
despair, undertaking to write to his cousin John for a statement of
what would be required, after which the decision was to be made.
Meantime Mr. Kendal advised Gilbert to attend to arithmetic and
book-keeping, and offered to instruct him in his long-forgotten
Hindostanee. Sophy learnt all these with all her heart, but Gilbert
always had a pain in his chest if he sat still at any kind of study!
CHAPTER XV.
Colonel Bury was the most open-hearted old bachelor in the country.
His imagination never could conceive the possibility of everybody not
being glad to meet everybody, his house could never be too full, his
dinner-parties of 'a few friends' overflowed the dining-room, and his
'nobody' meant always at least six bodies. Every season was fertile
in occasions of gathering old and young together to be made happy,
and little Mary Ferrars, at five years old, had told her mamma that
'the Colonel's parties made her quite dissipated.'
One bright summer day, his beaming face appeared at Willow-Lawn with
a peremptory invitation. His nephew and heir had newly married a
friend of Albinia's girlhood, and was about to pay his wedding visit.
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