Leonard came up behind them as they talked, Mr. Hamleigh standing by Miss Vandeleur's side, digging his stick into the heather and staring idly at the sea.
"What are you two talking about so earnestly?" he asked; "you are always together. I begin to understand why Hamleigh is so indifferent to sport."
The remark struck Angus as strange, as well as underbred. Dopsy had contrived to inflict a good deal of her society upon him at odd times; but he had taken particular care that nothing in his bearing or discourse should compromise either himself or the young lady.
Dopsy giggled faintly, and looked modestly at the heather. It was still early in the afternoon, and the western light shone full upon a face which might have been pretty if Nature's bloom had not long given place to the poetic pallor of the powder-puff.
"We were talking about Dickens," said Dopsy, with an elaborate air of struggling with the tumult of her feelings. "Don't you adore him?"
"If you mean the man who wrote books, I never read 'em," answered Leonard; "life isn't long enough for books that don't teach you anything. I've read pretty nearly every book that was ever written upon horses and dogs and guns, and a good many on mechanics; that's enough for me. I don't care for books that only titillate one's imagination. Why should one read books to make oneself cry and to make oneself laugh? It's as idiotic a habit as taking snuff to make oneself sneeze."
"That's rather a severe way of looking at the subject," said Angus.
"It's a practical way, that's all. My wife surfeits herself with poetry. She is stuffed with Tennyson and Browning, loaded to the very muzzle with Byron and Shelley. She reads Shakespeare as devoutly as she reads her Bible. But I don't see that it helps to make her pleasant company for her husband or her friends. She is never so happy as when she has her nose in a book; give her a bundle of books and a candle and she would be happy in the little house on the top of Willapark."
"Not without you and her boy," said Dopsy, gushingly. "She could never exist without you two."
Mr. Tregonell lit himself another cigar, and strolled off without a word.
"He has not lovable manners, has he?" inquired Dopsy, with her childish air; "but he is so good-hearted."