Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/273

Rh and the fine roll of his whiskers, which was too firm to give way, seemed only a sad reminiscence of past splendour and felicity. His sorrow came about in this wise.

After service on that Sunday morning, Mr Philip Debarry had left the rest of the family to go home in the carriage, and had remained at the Rectory to lunch with his uncle Augustus, that he might consult him touching some letters of importance. He had returned the letters to his pocket-book but had not returned the book to his pocket, and he finally walked away leaving the enclosure of private papers and bank-notes on his uncle's escritoire. After his arrival at home he was reminded of his omission, and immediately despatched Christian with a note begging his uncle to seal up the pocket-book and send it by the bearer. This commission, which was given between three and four o'clock, happened to be very unwelcome to the courier. The fact was that Mr Christian, who had been remarkable through life for that power of adapting himself to circumstances which enables a man to fall safely on all-fours in the most hurried expulsions and escapes, was not exempt from bodily suffering—a circumstance to which there is no known way of adapting one's self so as to be perfectly comfortable under it, or to push