Sounds of recognition and greeting pass between the Reverend
Septimus and somebody else, at the stair-foot. Mr. Jasper listens,
starts from his chair, and catches a young fellow in his arms,
exclaiming:
'My dear Edwin!'
'My dear Jack! So glad to see you!'
'Get off your greatcoat, bright boy, and sit down here in your own
corner. Your feet are not wet? Pull your boots off. Do pull your
boots off.'
'My dear Jack, I am as dry as a bone. Don't moddley-coddley,
there's a good fellow. I like anything better than being moddley-
coddleyed.'
With the check upon him of being unsympathetically restrained in a
genial outburst of enthusiasm, Mr. Jasper stands still, and looks
on intently at the young fellow, divesting himself of his outward
coat, hat, gloves, and so forth. Once for all, a look of
intentness and intensity--a look of hungry, exacting, watchful, and
yet devoted affection--is always, now and ever afterwards, on the
Jasper face whenever the Jasper face is addressed in this
direction. And whenever it is so addressed, it is never, on this
occasion or on any other, dividedly addressed; it is always
concentrated.
'Now I am right, and now I'll take my corner, Jack. Any dinner,
Jack?'
Mr. Jasper opens a door at the upper end of the room, and discloses
a small inner room pleasantly lighted and prepared, wherein a
comely dame is in the act of setting dishes on table.
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