"
"What, Lucy, Rupert?--Do you imagine Lucy cares a straw about my not
being a lawyer, for instance?"
"Do I?--out of all question. Don't you remember how the girls
wept--Grace as well as Lucy--when we went to sea, boy. It was all on
account of the _un_gentility of the profession, if a fellow can
use such a word."
I did not believe this, for I knew Grace better, to say the least; and
thought I understood Lucy sufficiently, at that time, to know she wept
because she was sorry to see me go away. Still, Lucy had grown from a
very young girl, since I sailed in the Crisis, into a young woman, and
might view things differently, now, from what she had done three years
before. I had not time, however, for further discussion at that
moment, and I cut the matter short.
"Well, Rupert, what am I to expect?" I asked; "Clawbonny, or no
Clawbonny?"
"Why, now you say the Mertons are to be of the party I suppose I shall
have to go; it would be inhospitable else. I do wish, Miles, you
would manage to establish visiting relations with some of the families
on the other side of the river. There are plenty of respectable people
within a few hours' sail of Clawbonny."
"My father, and my grandfather, and my great-grand-father, managed, as
you call it, to get along, for the last hundred years, well enough on
the west side; and, although we are not quite as genteel as the
_east_, we will do well enough.
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