We were very seldom interrupted by visitors: almost the only one was that unknown and unprepossessing friend of Russell's who has been mentioned before--his own contradictory in almost every respect. Very uncouth and dirty-looking he was, and stuttered terribly--rather, it seemed, from diffidence than from any natural defect. He showed some surprise on the first two or three occasions in which he encountered me, and made an immediate attempt to back out of the room again: and though Russell invariably recalled him, and showed an evident anxiety to treat him with every consideration, he never appeared at his ease for a moment, and made his escape as soon as possible. Russell always fixed a time for seeing him again--usually the next day; and there was evidently some object in these interviews, into which, as it was no concern of mine, I never inquired particularly, as I had already been intrusted with a confidence rather unusual as the result of a few weeks' acquaintance; and on the subject of his friend--"poor Smith," as he called him--Russell did not seem disposed to be communicative.
Time wore on, and brought round the Christmas vacation. I thought it due to myself, as all young men do, to get up to town for a week or two if possible; and being lucky enough to have an old aunt occupying a very dark house, much too large for her, and who, being rather a prosy personage, a little deaf, and very opinionated, and therefore not a special object of attraction to her relations (her property was merely a life-interest), was very glad to get any one to come and see her--I determined to pay a visit, in which the score of obligations would be pretty equally balanced on both sides. On the one hand, the _tête-à-tête_ dinners with the old lady, and her constant catechising about Oxford, were a decided bore to me; while it required some forbearance on her part to endure an inmate who constantly rushed into the drawing-room without wiping his boots, who had no taste for old china, and against whom the dear dog Petto had an unaccountable but decided antipathy. (Poor dog! I fear he was ungrateful: I used to devil sponge biscuit internally for him after dinner, kept a snuff-box more for his use than my own, and prolonged his life, I feel confident, at least twelve months from apoplexy, by pulling hairs out of his tail with a pair of tweezers whenever he went to sleep.) On the other hand, my aunt had good wine, and I used to praise it; which was agreeable to both parties. She got me pleasant invitations, and was enabled herself to make her appearance in society with a live nephew in her suite, who in her eyes (I confess, reader, old aunts are partial) was a very eligible young man. So my visit, on the whole, was mutually agreeable and advantageous. I had my mornings to myself, gratifying the dowager occasionally by a drive with her in the afternoon; and we had sufficient engagements for our evenings to make each other's sole society rather an unusual infliction. It is astonishing how much such an arrangement tends to keep people the best friends in the world.