that, he is pretty apt to think that these very productions would
place him at the tip-top of literature, if once they could be known.
Accordingly, without much more resistance, Eustace suffered Primrose
and Periwinkle to drag him into the drawing-room.

It was a large handsome apartment, with a semicircular window at one
end, in the recess of which stood a marble copy of Greenough's Angel and
Child. On one side of the fireplace there were many shelves of books,
gravely but richly bound. The white light of the astrallamp, and the
red glow of the bright coal-fire, made the room brilliant and cheerful;
and before the fire, in a deep arm-chair, sat Mr. Pringle, looking just
fit to be seated in such a chair, and in such a room. He was a tall and
quite a handsome gentleman, with a bald brow; and was always so nicely
dressed, that even Eustace Bright never liked to enter his presence,
without at least pausing at the threshold to settle his shirt-collar.
But now, as Primrose had hold of one of his hands, and Periwinkle of the
other, he was forced to make his appearance with a rough-and-tumble sort
of look, as if he had been rolling all day in a snow-bank. And so he
had.

Mr. Pringle turned towards the student, benignly enough, but in a way
that made him feel how uncombed and unbrushed he was, and how uncombed
and unbrushed, likewise, were his mind and thoughts.

"Eustace," said Mr. Pringle, with a smile, "I find that you are
producing a great sensation among the little public of Tanglewood, by
the exercise of your gifts of narrative. Primrose here, as the little
folks choose to call her, and the rest of the children, have been so
loud in praise of your stories, that Mrs. Pringle and myself are really
curious to hear a specimen. It would be so much the more gratifying to