'To see her sick schoolfellow, you know,' said Mrs. Chadwick. Then turning towards Spiridion Pratt, she whispered, 'She has such a tender heart.'
'Quite right,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'always look after those who are down on their luck, Nelly. I recollect when I was a youngster being laid by the heels with typhus fever down at Jarrow, when I would have given anything for the sight of a kindly woman's face at my bedside; but I never saw anybody except the pitman's wife who kept the cottage where I lodged, and the doctor attached to the works, who had to attend to about two hundred of us for thirty pounds a year. I pulled through somehow, though.'
'Thanks to our blessed Nature,' said Spiridion, with a side-glance at Eleanor, to see if she were looking at him. 'What beneficent wonders does she not work when left to herself!'
'She has worked the beneficent wonder of giving me a rare appetite this evening,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'not that that is a wonder though, when I come to think of it, as I have it pretty nigh every day about this time. My Fan, shall I ring for dinner, or do you expect any more swells?'
Mrs. Chadwick crimsoned as the objectionable word--of the perpetual use of which she had tried so hard to break her husband--struck upon her ear; but seeing that Mr. Pratt, being engaged in conversation with Eleanor, evidently had not heard it, she merely said, 'I am waiting for Mr. Eardley, my dear James, and a friend of his whom he has promised to bring with him.'
'Any friend of his will be welcome,' said Mr. Chadwick. 'I like Eardley, and I like his pictures, though I don't quite understand them; but he puts in plenty of colour; and though I wish he wouldn't paint so many people without their clothes, I--'
'James!' whispered his wife; and at that moment the door was thrown open, and the butler announced Mr. Eardley and Mr. Huff. It was not, however, under that name that Mr. Eardley introduced his friend to the hostess. 'Let me present to you Sir Nugent Uffington, my dear Mrs. Chadwick,' said he; 'a friend whose acquaintance I made under strange circumstances in a wild place several years ago, and to whose kindness and attention I owe my life.'
'Pray don't believe a word of this, Mrs. Chadwick,' said Uffington, with a somewhat cynical smile; 'our friend Eardley carries that romantic spirit which is so invaluable to him in his painting into his daily life, and unconsciously allows it to colour his utterances. His recovery was due rather to my medicine-chest than to my exertions, and there was nothing wonderful about it.'