Page:Precaution; a novel by Cooper, James Fenimore.djvu/355

Rh The admiral, however, determined to do nothing with his eyes shut, and he demanded a scrutiny.

"Where is the boy who is to be a duke?" exclaimed he, one day, when his friend had introduced the point with a view to a final arrangement. "Bell has good blood in her veins—is a tight built little vessel—clean heeled and trim, and would make as good a duchess as the best of them; so, Denbigh, I will begin by taking a survey of the senior."

To this the general had no objection, as he well knew that Francis would be wide of pleasing the tastes of an open-hearted, simple man, like the sailor. They met, accordingly, for what the general facetiously called the review, and what the admiral innocently termed his survey, at the house of the former, when the young gentlemen were submitted to his inspection.

Francis Denbigh was about four and twenty, of a feeble body, and with a face marked with the small-pox, to approaching deformity; his eye was brilliant and piercings but unsettled, and at times wild,—his manner awkward, constrained, and timid. There would be seen, it is true, an intelligence and animation, which occasionally lighted his countenance into gleams of sunshine, that caused you to overlook the lesser accompaniments of complexion and features in the expression; but they were transient, and inevitably vanished whenever his father spoke or in any manner mingled in his pursuits.

An observer close as Mrs. Wilson, would have said that the feelings of the father and son were not such as ought to exist between parent and child.

But the admiral, who regarded model and rigging a good deal, satisfied himself with muttering, as he turned his eye on the junior—

"He may do for a duke—but I would not have him for a cockswain."

George was a year younger than Francis; in form, stature, and personal grace, the counterpart of his father; his eye was less keen but more attractive than that of his brother; his air open, polished, and manly.