FORE:"And you consider that a reasonable request?"Hetty's uncle was evidently flattered. He liked talking of his own work, for his heart was in it, and he had for audience one of the most brilliant and beautiful women in London. His voice was something high pitched and it carried easily to Hetty's ears. Apparently, Bruce was gone, for the girl could see nothing of him anywhere. She was only too glad for a chance to sit down quietly and ponder over the disturbing events of the evening. Nobody was likely to be particularly interested in Leona Lalage's governess.
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FORE:There were plenty of people in Bracebridge who possessed it, but except at meetings and on official occasions he did not come in contact with them. As ex-fishmonger, as proprietor and managing director of the Stores, he moved in a society quite{70} distinct from those to whom John was learning so quickly to belong. But he could see them tellingly contrasted with each other if he cared to walk along Alfred Street, past the church where he was so regular an attendant on Sunday, to where there stood side by side the two social clubs of Bracebridge, namely the Bracebridge Club to which he himself and other business men belonged, and next door, the County Club from which those of his own social standing were excluded. The Bracebridge Club was far the more flourishing of the two: its bow-windows were always full of sleek and prosperous merchants, having their glass of sherry before lunch, or reading the papers when they arrived in the pleasant hour after offices and shops were shut in the evening. These premises were always crowded at the sociable hours of the business day, and at the last committee meeting the subject of an extension of accommodation had been discussed. There was no such congestion next door, where retired colonels, and occasional canons of the cathedral, and county magnates in Bracebridge for the day spoke softly to each other, or sought the isolation of a screening newspaper in a leather arm-chair. But the quality which Keeling found so hard to define and so easy to recognize, and which to him was perfectly distinct from any snobbish appreciation of position or title, brooded over those portals of the County{71} Club. In the families of those who frequented it the produce of his own secret garden grew wild, as it were: the culture, the education of which it was the fruit were indigenous to the soil. He did not suppose that Colonel Crawshaw, or Canon Arbuthnot, or Lord Inverbroom discussed Omar Khayyam or the Morte dArthur any more than did Alderman James, or Town-Councillor Phillips, but there was the soil from which culture sprang, just as from it sprang that indefinable air of breeding which already he observed in John. One day he had seen John standing in the window there with Colonel Crawshaw and his son, who was a schoolfellow of Johns, and Keelings heart had swelled with a strange mixture of admiration and envy to see how much John was at ease, sitting on the arm of a big chair, and with a nameless insouciance of respect refusing a cigarette which Colonel Crawshaw had offered him. Lord Inverbroom stood by John; and John was perfectly at ease in these surroundings. That was a tiny instance, but none could have been more typical. Keeling wanted, with the want of a thirsty man, not so much to belong to the County Club, as to feel himself at ease there if he did belong."Certainly, my child," was the reply; "he has been twice around the world, and has seen nearly every civilized and uncivilized country in it.[Pg 19] He speaks three or four languages fluently, and knows something of half a dozen others. Five years ago he was in Japan and China, and he is acquainted with many people living there. Don't you remember how he told us one evening about visiting a Japanese prince, and sitting cross-legged on the floor for half an hour, while they ate a dinner of boiled rice and stewed fish, and drank hot wine from little cups the size of a thimble?"
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FORE:Keeling took the card which he found to concern the man of whom he had this moment been thinking. Lord Inverbroom was Lord Lieutenant of the County, who lived some six miles outside Bracebridge in a house famed for its library and pictures. Its owner had held office in the last Conservative Cabinet, and was now an indefatigable promoter of county interests. Keeling met him with tolerable frequency on various boards, and there was no one in the world for whom he entertained a profounder respect.The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. "I hear you've ridden over fifty miles to-day."
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