through the windows, rolling heavily out of the tall chimnies, to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other chimnies.
“I am at your service, Mr. Steel,” says the gentleman, when his visitor has taken a rusty chair.
“Well, Mr. Rouncewell,” George replies, leaning forward, with his left arm on his knee, and his hat in his hand; and very chary of meeting his brother's eye; “I am not without my expectations, that in the present visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served as a Dragoon in my day; and a comrade of mine that I was once rather partial to, was, if I don't deceive myself, a brother of yours. I believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran away, and never did any good but in keeping away?”
“Are you quite sure,” returns the ironmaster, in an altered voice, “that your name is Steel?”
The trooper falters, and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls him by his name, and grasps him by both hands.
“You are too quick for me!” cries the trooper, with the tears springing out of his eyes. “How do you do, my dear old fellow. I never could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me as all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!”
They shake hands, and embrace each other, over and over again; the trooper still coupling his “How do you do, my dear old fellow!” with his protestation that he never thought his brother would have been half so glad to see him as all this!
“So far from it,” he declares, at the end of a full account of what has preceded his arrival there, “I had very little idea of making myself known. I thought, if you took by any means forgivingly to my name, I might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a letter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had considered it anything but welcome news to hear of me.”
“We will show you at home what kind of news we think it, George,” returns his brother. “This is a great day at home, and you could not have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an agreement with my son Watt to-day, that on this day twelvemonth he shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your travels. She goes to Germany to-morrow, with one of your nieces, for a little polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event, and you will be made the hero of it.”
Mr. George is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect, that he resists the proposed honor with great earnestness. Being overborne, however, by his brother and his nephew—concerning whom he renews his protestations that he never could have thought they would have been half so glad to see him—he is taken home to an elegant house, in all the arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture of the originally simple habits of the father and mother, with such as are suited to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their children. Here, Mr. George is much dismayed by the graces and accomplishments of his nieces that are; and by the beauty of Rosa, his niece that is to be; and by the affectionate salutations of these young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew; and has a woful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace.
