Glad if you'd come over.' Then more Madeira, and after it a stroll through the gardens and shrubberies and down to the sheds, a mile, or nearly, distant.

There, a somewhat confused vision of 'grand shorthorns,' and an inexplicable jumble of pedigrees, grand-dams, and 'g-g-g-g-g-g-dams,' as the catalogues have it; handsome hunters paraded, steam-engines pumping water, steam-engines slicing up roots, distant columns of smoke where steam-engines are tearing up the soil.

All the while a scientific disquisition on ammonia and the constituent parts and probable value of town sewage as compared with guano.

And at intervals, and at parting, a pressing invitation to dinner [when pineapples or hot-house grapes are certain to make their appearance at dessert]--such a flow of genial eloquence surely was never heard before! It requires a week at least of calm reflection, and many questions to his host, before the visitor--quite carried away--can begin to arrange his ideas, and to come slowly to the opinion that though Mr.X---- is as open as the day and frank to a fault, it will take him a precious long time to get to the bottom of Mr.X----'s system; that is to say, if there is any bottom at all to it.
Mr.X---- is, in brief, a gambler.

Not in a dishonest, or even suspicious sense, but a pure gambler.