‘Oh yes he is, sir.  He’ll be here directly.’

‘Have you seen him this morning?’

’No; I haven’t seen him.  But I know he’ll be here.  He said he would, last night.’

‘You speak of it as if it were an undertaking.’

‘No, not that, sir.  But we are not always quite up to time.’

‘No; indeed you are not.  Perhaps you sit late at the House.’

‘Sometimes I do,’ said the young member, with a feeling almost akin to shame as he remembered all the hours spent at the Beargarden.  ’I have had Gerald there in the Gallery sometimes.  It is just as well he should know what is being done.’

‘Quite as well.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder if he gets a seat some day.’

‘I don’t know how that may be.’

’He won’t change as I have done.  He’ll stick to your side.  Indeed I think he’d do better in the House than I shall.  He has more gift of the gab.’

‘That is not the first requisite.’

’I know all that, sir.  I’ve read your letter more than once, and I showed it to him.’

There was something sweet and pleasant in the young man’s manner by which the father could hardly not be captivated.  They had now sat down, and the servant had brought in the unusual accessories for a morning feast.  ‘What is all that?’ asked the Duke.

‘Gerald and I are so awfully hungry of a morning,’ said the son apologising.

’Well;—­it’s a very good thing to be hungry;—­that is if you can get plenty to eat.  Salmon is it?  I don’t think I’ll have any myself.  Kidneys!  Not for me.  I think I’ll take a bit of fried bacon.  I also am hungry, but now awfully hungry.’

‘You never seem to me to eat anything, sir.’

’Eating is an occupation from which I think a man takes the more pleasure the less he considers it.  A rural labourer who sits on the ditch-side with his bread and cheese and an onion has more enjoyment out of it than any Lucullus.’

‘But he likes a good deal of it.’

’I do not think he ever over-eats himself,—­which Lucullus does.  I have envied the ploughman his power,—­his dura ilia,—­but never an epicure the appreciative skill of his palate.  If Gerald does not make haste he will have to exercise neither the one nor the other upon that fish.’

’I will leave a bit for him, sir,—­and here he is.  You are twenty minutes late, Gerald.  My father says that bread and cheese and onions would be better for you than salmon and stewed kidneys.’

’No, Silverbridge;—­I said no such thing; but that if he were a hedger and ditcher the bread and cheese would be as good.’

‘I should not mind trying them all,’ said Gerald.  ’Only one never does have such things for breakfast.  Last winter a lot of us skated to Ely, and we ate two or three loaves of bread and a whole cheese, at a pot-house!  And as for beer, we drank the public dry.’

‘It was because for the time you had been a hedger and ditcher.’