THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES
faculty he had in modernising the myths of ancient times. Until twenty years of age, a young man may, indeed, be rather bashful about showing his poetry and his prose; but, for all that, he is pretty apt to think that these very productions would place him at the tiptop 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 semi-circular 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 astral-lamp, 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, 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.
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