“More than satisfied, sir,” I replied, eagerly.

“You shall not want for money, boy; and you may start as soon as you please.  Is the thing settled?”

“Quite, as far as I am concerned.”

My father rubbed his head all over with both hands, took off his spectacles, and walked up and down the room.  By these signs he expressed any unusual degree of satisfaction.  All at once he stopped, looked me full in the face, and said:—­

“Understand me, Basil.  I require one thing in return.”

“If that thing be industry, sir, I think I may promise that you shall not have cause to complain,”

My father shook his head.

“Not industry,” he said; “not industry alone.  Keep good company, my boy.  Keep good hours.  Never forget that a gentleman must look like a gentleman, dress like a gentleman, frequent the society of gentlemen.  To be a mere bookworm is to be a drone in the great hive.  I hate a drone—­as I hate a sloven.”

“I understand you, father,” I faltered, blushing.  “I know that of late I—­I have not....”

My father laid his hand suddenly over my mouth.

“No confessions—­no apologies,” he said hastily.  “We have both been to blame in more respects than one, and we shall both know how to be wiser in the future.  Now go, and consider all that you may require for your journey.”

Agitated, delighted, full of hope, I ran up to my own room, locked the door, and indulged in a delightful reverie.  What a prospect had suddenly opened before me!  What novelty! what adventure!  To have visited London would have been to fulfil all my desires; but to be sent to Paris was to receive a passport for Fairyland!

That day, for the first time in many months, I dressed myself carefully, and went down to dinner with a light heart, a cheerful face, and an unexceptionable neckcloth.

As I took my place at the table, my father looked up cheerily and gave me a pleased nod of recognition.

Our meal passed off very silently.  It was my father’s maxim that no man could do more than one thing well at a time—­especially at table; so we had contracted a habit which to strangers would have seemed even more unsociable than it really was, and gave to all our meals an air more penitential than convivial.  But this day was, in reality, a festive occasion, and my father was disposed to be more than usually agreeable.  When the cloth was removed, he flung the cellar-key at my head, and exclaimed, in a burst of unexampled good-humor:—­

“Basil, you dog, fetch up a bottle of the particular port!”

Now it is one of my theories that a man’s after-dinner talk takes much of its weight, color, and variety from the quality of his wines.  A generous vintage brings out generous sentiments.  Good fellowship, hospitality, liberal politics, and the milk of human kindness, may be uncorked simultaneously with a bottle of old Madeira; while a pint of thin Sauterne is productive only of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.  We grow sententious on Burgundy—­logical on Bordeaux—­sentimental on Cyprus—­maudlin on Lagrima Christi—­and witty on Champagne.