“Not Richard?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as Skimpole.”
“Pray, cousin John,” said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked over my shoulder, “what made him such a child?”
“What made him such a child?” inquired my guardian, rubbing his head, a little at a loss.
“Yes, cousin John.”
“Why,” he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, “he is all sentiment, and—and susceptibility, and—and sensibility, and—and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth attached too much importance to them and too little to any training that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he is. Hey?” said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us hopefully. “What do you think, you two?”
Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an expense to Richard.
“So it is, so it is,” returned my guardian hurriedly. “That must not be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do.”
And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds.
“Did he?” said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his face. “But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is nothing