Page:Bleak House.djvu/93

 Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what they expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Jarndyce than this. I had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was probably the most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should so desire to escape the gratitude of others.

We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging qualities of Ada and Richard, that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the first time, should be so unreserved, and should lay himself out to be so exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were naturally pleased for similar reasons, and considered it no common privilege to be so freely confided in by such an attractive man. The more we listened, the more gaily Mr. Skimpole talked. And what with his fine hilarious manner, and his engaging candor, and his genial way of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, “I am a child, you know ! You are designing people compared with me ;” (he really made me consider myself in that light) ; “but I am gay and innocent ; forget your worldly arts and play with me !”—the effect was absolutely dazzling.

He was so full of feeling too, and had such a delicate sentiment for what was beautiful or tender, that he could have won a heait by that alone. In the evening when I was preparing to make tea, and Ada was touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to her cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and sat down on the sofa near me, and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved him.

“She is like the morning,” he said. “With that golden hair, those blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is the child of the universe.”

Mr. Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us, with his hands behind him, and an attentive smile upon his face.

“The universe,” he observed, “makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.”

“O! I don′t know !” cried Mr. Skimpole, buoyantly.

“I think I do know,” said Mr. Jarndyce.

“Well!” cried Mr. Skimpole, “you know the (world which in your sense is the universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your way. But if I had mine,” glancing at the cousins, “there should be no brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. It should be strewn with roses ; it should lie through bowers, where there was no spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change should never wither it. The base word money should never be breathed near it!”

Mr. Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been really a child ; and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment, glanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a benignant expression in it which I often (how often !) saw again : which has long been engraven on my heart. The room in which they were, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by the fire. Ada sat at the piano ; Richard stood beside her, bending down. Upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by strange forms,