He made a little water-color drawing to enclose in a letter to Lucy; and now, as he sat gazing on the scene, he saw some effect of light on the landscape which made him half disposed to destroy his sketch and begin another.
"Tell your sister, Tom," wrote he, "that if my letter to her goes without the picture I promised her, it is because the sun has just got behind a sort of tattered broken cloud, and is streaming down long slips of light over the Wicklow hills and the woods at their feet, which are driving me crazy with envy; but if I look on it any longer, I shall only lose another post, so now to my task.
"Although I remained a day in the neighborhood, I was not received at Holt. Sir Hugh was ill, and most probably never heard of my vicinity. Lady Trafford sent me a polite--a very polite--note of regrets, &c., for not being able to ask me to the house, which she called a veritable hospital, the younger son having just returned from Madeira dangerously ill. She expressed a hope, more courteous possibly than sincere, that my stay in England would allow my returning and passing some days there, to which I sent a civil answer and went my way. The young fellow, I hear, cannot recover, so that Lionel will be the heir after all; that is, if Sir Hugh's temper should not carry him to the extent of disinheriting his son for a stranger. I was spared my trip to Cornwall; spared it by meeting in London with a knot of mining-people, 'Craig, Pears, and Denk,' who examined our ore, and pronounced it the finest ever brought to England. As the material for the white-lead of commerce, they say it is unrivalled; and when I told them that our supply might be called inexhaustible, they began to regard me as a sort of Croesus. I dined with them at a City club, called, I think, the Gresham, a very grand entertainment,--turtle and blackcock in abundance, and a deal of talk,--very bumptious talk of all the money we were all going to make, and how our shares, for we are to be a company, must run up within a week to eight or ten premium. They are, I doubt not, very honest fine fellows, but they are vulgar dogs, Tom, I may say it to you in confidence, and use freedoms with each other in intercourse that are scarcely pleasing. To myself personally there was no lack of courtesy, nor can I complain that there was any forgetful-ness of due respect. I could not accept their invitation to a second dinner at Greenwich, but deferred it till my return from Ireland.
