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His purpose was to sleep in one of the more decent hotels, to call the next day for help at the banking-house with which the Landales had dealt for ages past, and thence to take coach for Pulwick. But he had planned without taking reck of his circumstances. No hotel of repute would entertain this weather-beaten common sailor in the meanest of work-stained clothes.
And it was, in the days of the pride of the Landales, a most meet dwelling-place for that ancient race, insomuch as the history of so many of their ancestors was written successively upon stone and mortar, brick and tile, as well as upon carved oak, canvas-decked walls, and emblazoned windows.
With the exception of the hair, which he wore long and free, and of which the fair brown had begun to fade to silver-grey, the master of Scarthey was still the living presentment of the portrait which, even at that moment, presided among the assembly of canvas Landales in the gallery of Pulwick Priory. Eight years had passed over the model since the likeness had been fixed.
"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, whose eyes nothing escaped, "you need not look at Rupert, you can answer for yourself, I suppose you are not absolutely a drivelling idiot all the Landales are not ripening for lunatic asylums collect your wits, Sophia, I know you have not got any, but you have enough to be able to give a plain answer to a plain question, I suppose.
Rupert, to whom the well-known volubility of his aunt was most particularly disagreeable, but who had nevertheless saluted the stalwart old lady's cheek with much affection, here bent his supple back with a sort of mocking gallantry. "You maintain your device, permit me to say, my dear aunt, as ostentatiously in your person as we renegade Landales ourselves." "Pooh, pooh!
Proud of their long line of progenitors, it was a not unusual thing for the Landales to entertain their guests at breakfast in a certain sunny bow-window in the portrait gallery rather than in the breakfast parlour proper, which in winter, unmistakably harboured more damp than was pleasant.
But whilst the late Sir Thomas appeared in all the majesty of deputy-lieutenant, colonel of Militia, magistrate, and sundry other honourable offices, in his due place on the right of the present baronet, the latter figured in a character so strange and so incongruous that it seemed as if one day the dignified array of Landales old, young, middle-aged, but fine gentlemen, all of them must turn their backs upon their degenerate kinsman.
My antagonism to your mode of acting and thinking was precisely measured by your own against the world in which the Landales, as a family, hold a stake. Let that, therefore, be dismissed; and let us come at once to the special hostility you complain of in me, since the troublesome arrival of Aunt Rose and her wards.
Pulwick Priory, the ancestral home of the Cumbrian Landales, a dignified if not overpoweringly lordly mansion, rises almost on the ridge of the green slope which connects the high land with the sandy strand of Morecambe; overlooking to the west the great brown breezy bight, whilst on all other sides it is sheltered by its wooded park.
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