He showed Peter that country-side with the thoroughness of a
boy birds'-nesting, as Peter had once showed the Carolina
country-side to Claribel Spring. They went over the venerable house
with the same thoroughness, and Peter sensed the owner's
impersonally personal delight in the stewardship of a priceless
possession. He held it in trust, and he loved it with a quiet
passion that was as much a part of himself as was his English
speech. Every now and then he would pause before some rusty sword,
or maybe a tattered and dusty banner; and although he was of a very
florid complexion, and his nose was even bigger than Peter's, in
such moments there was that in the eye and brow, in the expression
of the firm lips, that made him more than handsome in the young
man's sight. Through him he glimpsed that something silent and large
and fine that is England.
"And we're going," said the nobleman, pausing before the portrait of
a gentleman who had fallen at Marston Moor. "Oh, yes, we are
vanishing. After a while the great breed of English gentlemen will
be as extinct as the dodo.
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