"I do not care for _real talk_," he says, looking amused; "I like
_gabble_ far, far better. I wish you would gabble a little now."

But the request naturally ties my tongue tight up.

"This is the tree that they planted when father was born," I say,
presently, in a stiff, _cicerone_ manner, pointing to a straight and
strong young oak, which is lifting its branchy head, and the fine
net-work of its brown twigs, to the cold, pale sky.

Sir Roger leans his arms on the top of the palings that surround the
tree.

"Ah! eight-and-forty years ago! eight-and-forty years ago!" he repeats
to himself with musing slowness. "Hard upon half a century!"

I turn over in my own mind whether I should do well to make some
observation of a trite and copy-book nature on the much greater duration
of trees than men, but reflecting that the application of the remark may
be painful to a person so elderly as the gentleman beside me, I abstain.
However, he does something of the kind himself.

"To think that it should be such a stripling," he says, looking with a
half-pensive smile at the straight young trunk, "hardly out of the
petticoat age, and _we_--he and I--such a couple of old wrecks!"

It never occurs to me that it would be polite, and even natural, to
contradict him. Why should not he call himself an old wreck, if it
amuses him? I suppose he only means to express a gentleman decidedly in
the decline of life, which, in my eyes, he is; so I say kindly and