Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/185

Rh herself to know the relationship, that she might be able to lean on him without reserve. Giles Inglett Saltren had been very solitary in Orleigh. He had not, indeed, been debarred the use of his mother-tongue; but he had been unable to give utterance to his thoughts; and of what profit is the gift of speech to a man, if he may not speak out what is on his mind? The young are possessed with eager desire to turn themselves inside out, and to show every one their internal organisation. A polypus has the same peculiarity. It becomes weary of exposing one surface to the tide, and so frankly and capriciously inverts itself, so that what was coat of stomach becomes external tissue, and the outer skin accommodates itself to the exercise of digestive functions. Young people do the same, and do it publicly, in society, in a drawing-room, in unsympathetic company. As we grow older we acquire reserve, and gradually withdraw our contents within ourselves, and never dream of allowing any other surface to become exposed to the general eye, but that furnished us by nature as our proper external envelope. The young tutor had his own crude, indigested notions, a mind in ferment, and an inflamed and irritable internal tissue, and he naturally and eagerly embraced the only opportunity he had of inverting himself.

Then, again, a still mightier temptation operated on Jingles, the temptation which besets every man to assume the rôle of somebody, who has been condemned to play the part of nobody, when an opening is given.

There is a poem in Percy's Reliques, that represents the grievances of the common Englishman at the time of the Reformation, who dislikes the change that is going on about him, the introduction of novelties, the greed that masqueraded under the name of religion; and every verse ends with the burden, "But I am little John Nobody, and durst not speak."

Jingles had been unable to express his opinion, to appear