“What do you think of that for a kite?” he said.

I answered that it was a beautiful one. I should think it must have been as much as seven feet high.

“I made it. We’ll go and fly it, you and I,” said Mr. Dick. “Do you see this?”

He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very closely and laboriously written; but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First’s head again in one or two places.

“There’s plenty of string,” said Mr. Dick, “and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long way. That’s my manner of diffusing ’em. I don’t know where they may come down. It’s according to circumstances, and the wind, and so forth; but I take my chance of that.”

His face was so very mild and pleasant, and had something so reverend in it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was not sure but that he was having a good-humoured jest with me. So I laughed, and he laughed, and we parted the best friends possible.

“Well, child,” said my aunt, when I went down-stairs. “And what of Mr. Dick, this morning?”

I informed her that he sent his compliments, and was getting on very well indeed.

“What do you think of him?” said my aunt.

I had some shadowy idea of endeavouring to evade the question by replying that I thought him a very nice gentleman; but my aunt was not to be so put off, for she laid her work down in her lap, and said, folding her hands upon it—

“Come! Your sister, Betsey Trotwood, would have told me what she thought of any one, directly. Be as like your sister as you can, and speak out!”

“Is he—is Mr. Dick—I ask because I don’t know, aunt—is he at all out of his mind, then?” I stammered; for I felt I was on dangerous ground.

“Not a morsel,” said my aunt.

“Oh, indeed!” I observed, faintly.

“If there is anything in the world,” said my aunt, with great decision and force of manner, “that Mr. Dick is not, it’s that.”

I had nothing better to offer than another timid “Oh, indeed!”

“He has been called mad,” said my aunt. “I have a selfish pleasure in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upwards—in fact, ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me.”

“So long as that?” I said.

“And nice people they were who had the audacity to call him mad,” pursued my aunt. “Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connection of mine; it doesn’t matter how; I needn’t enter into that. If it hadn’t been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life. That’s all.”

I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.