Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/41

 III.

little visit was to terminate immediately after luncheon the following day: much as the old man enjoyed his being there he would not have dreamed of asking for more of his time now that it had such great public uses. He liked infinitely better that his young friend should be occupied with parliamentary work than only occupied in talking about it with him. Talk about it however was the next best thing, as on the morrow after breakfast Mr. Carteret showed Nick that he considered. They sat in the garden, the morning being warm, and the old man had a table beside him, covered with the letters and newspapers that the post had brought. He was proud of his correspondence, which was altogether on public affairs, and proud in a manner of the fact that he now dictated almost everything. That had more in it of the statesman in retirement, a character indeed not consciously assumed by Mr. Carteret, but always tacitly attributed to him by Nick, who took it rather from the pictorial point of view: remembering on each occasion only afterwards that though he was in retirement he had not exactly been a statesman. A young man, a very sharp, handy young man, came every morning at ten o'clock and wrote for him till lunch-time. The young man