He hated people who were unsocial and averse
to dining out, and who departed from the ways of living common
among English country gentlemen. Mr. Mainwaring was, upon the
whole, prepared to take the other side.
Reginald Morton, though he was now nearly forty, was a young
looking handsome man, with fair hair, cut short, and a light beard,
which was always clipped. Though his mother had been an innkeeper's
daughter in Montreal he had the Morton blue eyes and the handsome
well-cut Morton nose. He was nearly six feet high, and strongly
made, and was known to be a much finer man than the Secretary of
Legation, who was rather small, and supposed to be not very robust.
Our lonely man was a great walker, and had investigated every lane
and pathway, and almost every hedge within ten miles of
Dillsborough before he had resided there two years; but his
favourite rambles were all in the neighbourhood of Bragton. As
there was no one living in the house,--no one but the old
housekeeper who had lived there always,--he was able to wander
about the place as he pleased. On the Tuesday afternoon, after
the meeting of the Dillsborough Club which has been recorded, he
was seated, about three o'clock, on the rail of the foot-bridge
over the Dil, with a long German pipe hanging from his mouth. He
was noted throughout the whole country for this pipe, or for others
like it, such a one usually being in his mouth as he wandered
about.
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