Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/542

 534 content to see in the glass the reflection of a set of intellectual features, somewhat of the Grecian type, but manifesting much power of decision, despite the good-tempered expression which they habitually wore. He perceived also that the person thus reflected was rather slight, but well made, and a little above the average height, and that his dress was in accordance with the fashion of the day, with a little more lightness and colour about it than one usually sees in the costume of a man of business. Lygon was a good looking, well-dressed man, and if he had been previously unaware of the fact, he had been told it, with other things of a pleasant character, in one of a highly complimentary series of sketches called Our Civilians, which were appearing in a pictorial paper devoted to the immortalising British Worthies of various degrees of worthiness.

In the memoir annexed to the likeness of the civilian in question it was stated, with perfect accuracy, that Mr. Arthur Lygon had entered the Plaudit Office when young, had risen, by his own merits, to a responsible and lucrative situation, was much liked by his comrades, and much respected by his superiors, and was in every respect a valuable public servant. It was further stated, in classical language, that he had given hostages to society, a process that was explained to mean that he had married Laura, third daughter of Archibald Vernon of Lipthwaite, in the county of Surrey, and had three children. Society, therefore, had only to purchase the respectable journal containing the sketches of Our Civilians, in order to avoid betraying any ignorance upon so important a matter as the social position of Mr. Arthur Lygon, of the Plaudit Office; and if it were in his destiny to distinguish himself in after-time, and to join the legislative assembly of his country, here were materials ready at hand for the Parliamentary Handbooks—one is glad to be able to supply some vindication of the biographical zeal of the present age.

Arthur Lygon, before leaving his room, tore away from the Almanac the one-day face that stared in his own, and he thus treated the day as at an end. This operation left next day’s date visible, and it was Thursday, June 17, 185—.

Of this date, however, there was no need to remind him, as a neat square packet on his table testified. The Thursday was the birthday of his little girl, Clara, and the packet contained a handsome picture-book, which he had bought for her some days back, and which had just come to him with the small lady’s name elegantly imprinted thereon in golden letters. Lygon did not leave even trifles to the last minute, and moreover did not consider it a trifle to bring out an additional sparkle in his child’s eye, or a second scream of pleasure from her merry rosy mouth.

He walked westward, and having nearly a couple of hours between the time and his dinner hour, he had ample leisure to make the walk to Brampton an agreeable lounge. And the man who cannot lounge in comfort and delectation along the Strand on a fine day is simply a fool. If that eternal New Zealander can spare time from his ridiculous efforts to keep his own and his father’s land from the land-jobbers, and will come over here before the arch is ruined and ready for him, he may be really well educated by a few walks up and down our great thoroughfare. “To have loved her was a liberal education,” was exquisitely written of a lady of old. If a tolerably practical curriculum, with a dash of sentiment and poetry in it, were wanted, it might be difficult to prescribe better than in the words “Walk the Strand.”

Lygon, of course, walked it as an habitué walks. He noted some new machine, approved it as useful, or smiled at it as a bit of quackery. He glanced over the Parian sculptures and the painted plates, and very properly remembered that he owed Laura a present—which he would continue to owe her. He stopped for a moment before the maps, and refreshed his memory as to the distance from Calcutta to Canton—there was talk about China, just then, at the dinner-tables. He looked at the jewellery, and wondered how such a number of jewel shops could find customers enough, and also whether there would ever be any new patterns worth stopping to look at. He not only paused at the book-shops; but, half-adhering to the old faith that you may buy bargains there, and that the vendors do not know the value of books better than you do, he examined a good many of the labels with the usual result; namely, confirmation of the new faith, that if you want a good thing you must pay a good price for it. He regarded the windows set out with minerals, and felt half-tempted to torment his second boy, Frederick, with a toy that is warranted to teach geology in a week; but fatherly feeling prevailed, and he passed on. He scarcely looked at some huge play-bills, because they had not been changed for two months, and Laura had seen and duly shuddered at the Maelstrom, and the screams as the ship went down, in that awful drama. He noticed all the print-shops, and resisted all the temptations that worn plates and cheap frames could offer, as well as the less easily resisted temptation of some German engravings of the higher class—for the Strand baits for all fish. And except that he bought a little gold pencil-case, to be given to Clara by her mamma, on the morrow, and recollected Walter’s request for a new knife, Mr. Lygon reached Trafalgar Square without much detriment to his worldly means.

“Only half-past five,” he said, as he reached his own pleasant house in Gurdon Terrace.

Walter, a high-spirited, dark-eyed boy, of ten years old, heard his father’s latch-key, and was in a moment tearing down the stairs with that cataract rush peculiar to the species.

“Ah! papa,” he cried, throwing his arms round Mr. Lygon’s neck. “Got my knife?” he added, proceeding almost in the same breath from affection to business.

“Knife?” repeated his father, pretending to be unconscious of the boy’s meaning. “Knife, my boy?”

“Yes, knife my boy,” returned Walter, for when was a child deceived by a loving voice “You’ve got it, you know you have.”

“Well, whether I have got it or not, you might let me come into the room,” said his father, entering a little apartment on the left of the hall. The room was conventionally described in the house as