Mr. PERTINAX TUFTOE’S carriage entered the lodge-gates of Lady Anne’s demesnes; and Mr. Tuftoe, putting his head out of the window of it, examined with attention the character of the grounds. Not that he cared a jot for mere scenery. Mr. Tuftoe was neither an artist nor a poet. All he cared to consider was whether the place was one of mark and importance, or of mere ordinary commonplace gentility. Certainly one merit the heads of our great public seminaries may justly claim. They do not condescend to intrigue for pupils. Boys come to them in numbers so great that they need not canvass for the confidence of parents. Mr. Tuftoe, as Second Master of * * * was supremely indifferent (and he would have been equally indifferent as Head Master) whether there was one boy more or less in its play-grounds. But Mr. Tuftoe had a profound constitutional veneration for worldly influence and position. Voluit episcopari. He had an indistinct prophetic notion that, by the aid of some grateful patrician pupil, he was some day to wake with his arms in lawn sleeves and his head in a mitre. At this present time he had but two vacancies in his own house, and two candidates for them: one, the son of a rich country baronet; the other, the son of an able, enterprising merchant who represented in Parliament a commercial city. Neither of the two, however respectable, came up to the top mark in Mr. Tuftoe’s imagination. But both seemed to him more promising than this well-born young gentleman whose school expenses that tiresome old bachelor proposed to halve. Still, Mr. Tuftoe looked out with some languid curiosity upon the grounds of Wardour Hall. And, as he eyed them, he said to himself, doubtfully, “But it is a place of some importance. Cotton says the estate-is fine, though encumbered. Very fine trees, certainly. And the boy is an Earl’s grandson, and if the Earl don’t notice him, still the Hastingses have high connections.”
Doubtless the aspect of the grounds conveyed the idea of hereditary acres. The predecessor of Colonel Hastings, rarely residing at his country-seat, and having had the extraordinary good-fortune to have the large old Manor House burnt down, had instructed his steward to dismantle the gardens and turn the park to the best advantage, contenting himself with a small habitation which he built by the side of the ruined Hall. The deer had been expelled from the park. The park itself was reduced to a lawn and paddock, and the rest of the ground ploughed up and converted into a farm. But as the road wound through this paddock the limits of the sward were concealed by groups of venerable trees (more ornamental than valuable, otherwise they had not been spared), and their appearance was imposing. The distant hills, too, were crowned with woodland. It was only when Mr. Tuftoe’s carriage stopped at the door of a small unpretending house, which but for the creepers trained round it would have been ugly, and which spoke of decayed fortunes — from its contiguity to the charred and ivy-mantled ruins of the old Hall, with their vast fissures and dismal rents — that the ambitious man murmured to himself, “No, I don’t sec anything to be got here!”
With this conclusion the Genius of Calculation came to a dead stop. But a voice from that spirit which presides over the gastric juices sighed out, soothingly, “except a luncheon.” Then, with the majestic strut of a gentleman and a school-master, Mr. Tuftoe stepped across the insignificant hall, and was ushered into the drawing-room. —