Chapter II

When Mr. John Brag left his respected mother, he hurried off to the rendezvous of his sporting friends, whence they proceeded in a body to mark out the line of country for the steeple-chase. In this operation he exhibited, as he fancied, all the tactics of the most experienced quartermaster-general. In endeavouring, however, to elucidate the difficulties of a leap which, he thought essential to the effect of the race, he came somewhat unexpectedly off his horse. A little dirt, and a bruise or two out of sight, of which he gave no evidence, were all the consequences of this performance; and having made every necessary arrangement for the exhibition of the following day, he hastened to a small public-house a little way removed from the high road, which rejoiced in the sign of the “Duke of Marlborough,” in order to change his clothes and prepare himself for a flying visit to the shop, to which a promise made to his mother in the morning was carrying him in the afternoon.

When some of Brag’s associates in the field questioned him as to his cause of hurry, he made his excuses in so confused a tone, that he left, as he meant to do, an impression upon the minds of his country cronies, that he was under an enslavement to the illustrious descendant of the hero of Blenheim and Malplaquet, rather than to the landlord of the house where the pictured warrior swang “high in air” before the door. However, it was all “straight up, right down, and no mistake;” and the pretender “cut ’cross the country” to his hostelry, at which had been deposited his portmanteau “down per coach,” which contained his clothes for the two coming days’ performances,--his pet scarlet coat and white cords by way of a show, and if necessary a pink silk jacket with yellow sleeves for the steeple-chase.

When he arrived at the goal--the sign of the “Duke of Marlborough,” he was surprised to find the only sitting-room of the “hotel” occupied. A stranger, who had been driven into the house for shelter from the “pitiless pelting” of a hail-storm, in which the admirable tallow-chandler had been drenched, was sitting before the fire--agreeable in any season in England, but particularly so in the equivocal weather of a British spring--reading the County Press of the preceding Saturday, redolent of tobacco, and stamped with the circular impressions of sundry pewter-pot bottoms which had reposed upon its columns.

“I say, Stubbs,” said our hero, who was known to the landlord as ‘the most sportingest gentleman as ever come down to them parts,’ “what’s this? I ordered my dinner this morning”--(his luncheon with the Duke of Marlborough,)--“and find the room engaged;--what’s this?”

An attempt on the part of Stubbs to soothe the boiling rage of Brag, by sundry qualifying expressions of regret, and a few “I dare says,” and “The gentleman won’t be long,” and several such pacificatory observations, was happily seconded by the occupant of the parlour himself; who upon beholding the inflation of the little Cockney, whose vulgar red and white face was illuminated by the fire which raged within, rose from his seat and said, in the best possible humour, that he feared he was an intruder, but that he had been driven in by stress of weather; that he had ordered some luncheon, which he concluded was nearly ready; and that if the gentleman would permit him to do so, he should be happy to share the repast with him, which, as he seemed to be himself wet and cold, would perhaps not be disagreeable to him.

“Oh,” said Brag, “I’m not the chap to quarrel about trifles: only, I certainly, when I sent my horses down here, did say I should come and dine here; and I have been here often before, and I never was served so till to-day. However, I’m much obliged by your civility, and haven’t the least objection to join you, each of us in course paying, share and share alike.”

“Oh, as you please,” said the stranger, in whose eye there lurked a laughing smile, and who seemed satisfied, by the little he had seen of his new and important acquaintance, that he should find something like amusement in the cultivation of a temporary friendship with him.

“I’ll just step up-stairs,” said Brag, “and cast my skin, as I call it; and by that time, Stubbs, the luncheon will be ready.”

“In five minutes, sir,” said Stubbs.

“I say,” said Brag as he went along the passage, “who is that chap in the parlour?”

“I haven’t a notion, sir,” said the landlord. “He came here in the midst of that pelting hail-storm about half an hour ago, on a fine strong horse which is now in the stable, and which seems to have had a pretty sharpish run somehow; and he ordered a fire to be lighted and some chops to be got ready, and said he would stop an hour or two.”

“No servant?” said Brag.

“No.”

“Don’t carry bags?” asked Brag.

“No,” replied Stubbs.

“Seems genteel,” said the tallow-chandler; “no chance of anything wrong?--plain drest man on a fine horse--eh, don’t you understand? straight up, right down--eh, no mistake. No chance of highwaymen now-a-days?”

“Lor’, no, sir,” said Stubbs; “such a thought never entered my head. To be sure, he looked at your two hunters in the stable, and asked Jem who they belonged to.”

“What did he say?” said Brag.

“To one Squire Brag,” said Stubbs; “a gentleman from London.”

“Right, quite right,” said Brag: “no occasion to tell everybody the truth. And he admired them, did he?”

“Indeed he did,” said Stubbs.

“Oh, all right, no mistake,” said Brag, delighted to have unconsciously impressed upon the mind of his “promiscuous acquaintance” the character of his pretensions to consideration and his right of swagger. “I’ll just go and run my eye over _his_ nag before I go into the parlour, and then we shall be on a footing, eh?”

Stubbs bowed; and Brag proceeded to change his clothes.

While he was performing that operation, the ever-active landlord added another knife and fork to the table already prepared for his other visitor: of which opportunity the stranger availed himself to inquire who the curious little gentleman in the green jacket and white cords might be; and in answer to his question touching that important subject, he was accurately informed by mine host, as far as he knew;--that he was a gentleman of large fortune from the City, he believed, who was in the habit of hunting with all the hounds in the metropolitan counties: that he usually kept his horses there; that he was the owner of the two which the gentleman had so much admired; that he was a choice spirit, and mixed in very high company; all of which information the strange gentleman seemed to receive with considerable satisfaction--probably, as Stubbs the landlord thought, because he should feel himself honoured and gratified by the countenance and society of so distinguished an individual as Brag, and because he inwardly rejoiced at having made a point of showing so much courtesy and attention on his first arrival to a gentleman of such respectability and importance.

The stranger’s inquiries and the landlord’s elucidations had scarcely ended, before the volatile Cockney made his re-appearance.

“Come, Stubbs,” cried he, rubbing his hands as he entered the little sanded parlour, “be alive, my fine fellow! up with the chops! no nonsense--sharp’s the word and quick’s the motion, eh?--straight up, right down, and no mistake.”

“They will be ready in two minutes, sir,” said the landlord as he quitted the apartment.

“That’s the way I manage ’em,” said Brag; “none of your crawlers for me. I dare say you have been waiting ever so long for your feed; they don’t mind strangers--everything is habit, sir,--used to _me_--know I won’t stand upon trifles. I pay ready money, and don’t stint--eh? that’s the way I keep ’em all alive.--Are you from town to-day?”

“No,” said the stranger; “I am on my road across the country. I rode farther than I intended, and was caught in the last storm.”

“Oh,” said Brag, beginning to exercise what he considered his tact in ascertaining the calling of his companion; “you are not going straight along?”

“No,” replied his new friend, “merely taking a canter.”

“Blowing away the cobwebs, as my friend Lord Tom Towzle says,” said Brag, looking at himself in the miserable glass which surmounted the mantel-shelf, adjusting his shirt-collar, and combing out his curls, of which he was as vain as a peacock of his tail. “I never had harder work: pitched right over my little hack’s head, trying to show my friend Lord Wagly, the right-earnest way of taking a double fence. To be sure, it was too much for the poor little thing, and it served me right. I was spilt--up again in a minute--all, as quick as Queen Elizabeth. I say, that’s a fine horse of yours in the stable----Stir the fire--hem,--or lend me the poker----eh?--capital nag, I calculate, as the Yankees say?”

“Yes,” said the stranger, “a fine serviceable animal: I ride pretty heavy, and require something strong to carry me. You have two clever animals in the boxes here; I assure you I had been admiring them very much before you arrived.”

“Yes,” said Brag, “nice tits, I flatter myself: I never had two horses that suited me better. I have--let me see--eight--no, nine--yes, nine--much of a muchness; four in Leicestershire, two here, and the rest in London--nursing a bit, that’s my way. I say sport’s sport--never overwork kind animals--don’t break their hearts even if you break their backs. So I keep enough to do it easy: for, as I said to Towzle, what’s the use of plenty of money if you don’t spend it?--eh! The devil take this fellow! _his_ chops are not ready, though ours are--he! Did you ever hear that before,--deuced good, eh?--old, I guess, and no mistake. I’ll just give him a reminder.”

Saying which, Brag seized the bell-rope, and gave it so tremendous a jerk, that down it came, bringing with it a cloud of dust, just at the moment that the door opened, and presented to the view of the guests, Stubbs, with the chops, and Rachel his daughter at his heels, bearing a dish of potatoes, and a plate, whereon were deposited two vine leaves of blue ware, filled, the one with gherkins green, the other with walnuts brown.

Rachel was about seventeen, pretty and arch, with a pair of expressively lively black eyes. It was clear that Brag had seen them before, and that Rachel was not altogether insensible of their power; and while the assiduous Stubbs was regulating the plates and knives and forks at their proper angles on the table, the Nimrod of Cockaigne was slyly pressing the elbow--rather of the reddest--of the amiable Rachel, as she stretched one hand forward towards her unsuspecting parent, in the act of offering him the vegetables wherewith to deck the table. The stranger saw the dexterous manœuvre of his new companion, but appeared to be wholly unconscious of his insinuativeness.

“That’s a pretty girl,” said Brag after the parent and child had left the room,--“sly as a pussy cat. Dear me! the things one _does_ see in this world! No matter where one goes, it is all the same! One has only to look at a girl, or a woman older a deuced deal than that, down she comes; I don’t know how it is, or how you find it, but, by Job,” (as Brag always called Jove,) “it’s a difficult thing to keep clear of the female sex; I suppose it’s something in one’s manner--eh,--don’t you think so?--’pon my life I don’t know.”

“Why,” said the stranger, “I am not in the habit of generalizing upon such subjects: a woman worthy of being won is not so easily won.”

“Oh! ah!” said Brag; “you mean tip-toppers, blue-stockings, nobs, and all that kind of thing: I mean the sex taken what I call collectively. What do you drink, eh? Ale, by Job! Here, here, just put your head out of the door and call Stubbs; you are nearer than me: I wish I hadn’t broken the bell. Call him,--or stay;--no, I’ll speak to him,--have up _my_ tap--eh,--don’t you see?”

The volubility and vanity of the Cockney amused as well as surprised the stranger, who, upon Brag’s resuming his seat, endeavoured to draw him back--which there was little difficulty in doing--to his old subject, by telling him one of the innumerable _bons mots_ of the celebrated Sophie Arnould, who, when a Brag of her day, in descanting largely upon his success with a certain demoiselle of the rank and standing of Rachel Stubbs, told her that the affair had made a great noise in the neighbourhood, asked whether it were not occasioned by the lady’s pattens. Brag did not see the application, and went on, as his acquaintance with his companion grew, and his familiarity ripened, to be extremely communicative, most especially upon his own successes in the way of “Don-Juanism.”

The _sederunt_ of the companions was considerably lengthened by a return of bad weather. The rain and hail again poured down in torrents; and Brag, who denounced wine in such a place, resolved upon keeping out the cold with some hot mixture. The stranger, who was also weather-bound, seemed not altogether disinclined to follow his companion’s example; and they drew their chairs towards the fire, in order to wait with patience for a brighter sky; which, as the spring had set in with its accustomed severity, they were not soon certain of seeing.

“I am told,” said a lady of rank to the Persian Ambassador, who was in this country so many years since, that, for the sake of my female friends, I will not say how many,--“I am told, sir, that in _your_ country they worship the sun.” “True, madam,” replied the Ambassador; “and so they would in _yours_, if they ever saw him.” The hope of catching a glimpse of him on the day of Brag’s adventure at the “Duke of Marlborough” was but faint and remote: the storm pattered against the casements of the humble apartment which he and his associate occupied, and Jack was resolved to show that his spirits, however mercurial, were not altogether dependant upon the weather.

“Blessing, good temper,” said Brag,--“eh?--makes no difference to me--life is not long enough to be sorry; clouds or sunshine, on I go, smack, smooth ’cross the country, and no mistake.--As I was saying just now, if I were to write my life and adventures, what a book it would make! to be sure, one could not publish it;--compromise so many dear delicious creatures--eh?”

“But do you find,” said the stranger, “this facility of conquest equally general in the higher classes, with whom, as you have already said, you mix?”

“Equal,” exclaimed Brag, emptying at the same moment his first glass of Stubbs’s punch,--“the same everywhere. I grant you, the females of the aristocracy are more closely watched; the eyes of the world are more on them. But, dear me, when they are out of sight--when we are what I call tiled,--all snug and comfortable, and no mistake,--I think the tip-toppers are livelier than the mediums.”

“And these females, as you call them,” said the stranger, “are they most easily led away by person or manner, or accomplishments?”

“A little of all,” said Jack, running the dumpy fingers of one of his little fat hands through his curls, and pulling up his shirt-collar with the other as usual;--“manner is everything--that’s it, sir; genteel, but bordering upon the lively--eh, don’t you understand? Now there’s Lady Fanny Smartly, as nice a horse-woman as you’ll see in a summer’s day;--why, Lor--just see me lend her my arm to mount! Her brother looks with wonder--the groom retires with awe--and then she gives me a smile, as much as to say, ‘You are a sharp little fellow, Jack!’ Well, then in the evening, there I find her all gentle and languishing--you wouldn’t think she had ever seen a horse in her life;--and then she laughs,--and I look, and then she laughs again; and you can’t think how one gets on in that way--eh, and no mistake!”

“Lady Fanny Smartly?” said the stranger; “I think I have occasionally seen her riding in London.”

“Very likely,” said Jack; “but that’s not the way to know her. Now there’s Mrs. Dallington--a friend of mine, and her sister--they live close up by Grosvenor Square;--I go there almost every day; they are as opposite as light from dark,--one all sharp, you know--sort of daisy-cutting tit--smack smooth, and no mistake;--the other, Miss Blanche Englefield, all meek, modest, quiet; what you call retiring, soft, gentle.”

“A melting beauty?” said the stranger.

“No,” said Jack, colouring; “not melting;--a--not that sort of thing,--but--distant, and shy. Why, now with _me_, she is all free and easy. There I see a couple of men day after day dancing attendance upon these two women, and dying to marry them. In course I shouldn’t take any advantage of my friends, as I told Lord Tom--a crack crony of mine--Lord Tom Towzle. I never would--no, I scorn the action,--but it is hard to refrain.”

“Lord Tom Towzle,” said the stranger, “is a son of the Duke of Ditchwater,--is he not?”

“He is,” said Jack: “I see you know some of their names. Did you ever see Lord Tom? I always call him Tommy for shortness;--he is an excellent fellow in his way,--not over respectable in money matters--but an uncommon good un to go ’cross a country.”

“Have you seen much of his aunt, Lady Bloomville?” said the stranger.

“Oh, the old toad!” said Jack; “a regular scarecrow,--she is what people call a respectable body--eh! reads him lectures and all that--he can’t bear her;--we have a great deal of fun there sometimes--we go and what he calls roast her.”

“I had always heard,” said the stranger, “that she was a remarkably respectable amiable person. I hope you never found _her_ so complying as you seem to have found the rest of your fashionable friends.”

“I tell you what,” said Brag, putting his finger to his nose--“if _you_ knew what _I_ know, you wouldn’t be surprised at anything.”

“She has a brother, hasn’t she?” said the stranger.

“What, Lady Bloomville?” asked Jack.

“Yes,” replied the stranger.

“Oh, yes, Lord Ilfracombe,” said Jack; “and a queer chap he is too.”

“Is he much at Lady Bloomville’s?” asked the stranger.

“More than we like,” replied Brag; “he is what I call a dull dog,--good man in his way,--plain, and no show,--none of what I call gammon. I say, I must have another jorum of this stuff--put your head out and call, will you--eh! make yourself useful--nothing like sociability, and no mistake--eh!”

The stranger obeyed, and called the waiter; Rachel appeared, and Jack ordered a replenishment of punch, in doing which, having previously expressed his admiration of the waitress, he suited the action to the word, and then resumed.

“Old Ilfracombe is a queer one,” said he, “a bore,--won’t sit after dinner. Now, as I say to Lord Tom, that is a fault of the young ones;--no conversation,--no nothing now--up go the ladies, and then comes ‘Will anybody have any more wine, or shall we have coffee?’ and up we go after them,--no opportunity for what somebody calls the feast of reason and the flow of soul, or, as I read it, ‘flow of bowl,’--eh!”

“So then,” said the stranger, “this Lord Ilfracombe is what may be called a wet blanket!--he doesn’t look like one of the Kill-joys.”

“Do you think not?” said Jack. “I suppose you have only seen him by chance, at some public dinner, or somewhere where smiles are always ready. If you knew him as well as I and Lord Tom do, you would set him down for as great a bore as ever lived.”

“And is Lord Tom, as you call him,” said the stranger, “in love with either of the ladies you have mentioned to me?”

“Not a bit,” said Jack. “Tommy and I--or rather, I might say, I and Tommy, take a different course,--butterflies, bees,--eh!--don’t you see?--rove and sip--and no mistake. No, I think it would be an injustice in either of us to marry. But, there are two very respectable men dangling--you understand what I mean.”

“Perfectly,” said the stranger.

“But,” said Brag, “it is painful to see it--eh!--Lord bless your heart--however--Oh! here is my second glass--put it down, Rachel,--here--come round--this way,--don’t be frightened, the gentleman won’t eat you.”

Rachel did as she was bid, but it was quite clear by the expression of her pretty countenance as she left the room, that she did not think quite so much of Brag as Brag thought of himself.

“If you,” said Brag, “had opportunities as I have of seeing the best society,--what I call skimming the cream, you would be in the secret; but without seeing it, as I said before, there’s no believing it--eh!”

“I am sure you are right,” said the stranger. “I think Lord Ilfracombe has a son, hasn’t he?”

“To be sure he has,” said Brag, “Lord Dawlish,--and a nice chap he is too; he married a Miss Linton, the daughter of a country gentleman in my lord’s neighbourhood. I know all the facts from Lord Tommy. She is like a doll in a toy-shop window--waxy and winky-eyed--eh! You understand--money--the father sold the child to buy the title, and a pretty swop too. Lord bless you! they live like cat and dog. I can’t bear her--mawkish--eh! Don’t you take some more of this mixture?”

“Not yet,” said the stranger. “And does Lord Dawlish mix much in your sports?”

“Why now,” said Jack, “before you carry this on too far, I _do_ think you ought to tell me why you ask. I don’t think it fair, living with these people as I do, what you call hand-in-glove, and all that, to let out; you may, perhaps, have an interest in knowing particulars. I am sure you won’t be offended, but I take it that you are in the mercantile line, and what people in the city call travelling on your own bottom--you want to know where credit may and where it mayn’t be given--eh? I don’t think I ought to commit my friends, old cocky--eh! all right and no mistake--don’t you think so?”

“Certainly,” said the stranger; “I didn’t know that Lord Dawlish _was_ a friend of yours.”

“The whole clique,” said Brag, looking very cunning; “and I can tell you this--they _know_ I am rich, eh!--all snug, smug, and no mistake.”

“Well,” said the stranger, “I am much obliged for the mixture of confidence in _me_, and the consideration of _them_, which regulates your communications;--but I suppose old Ilfracombe himself is a steady goer?”

“Umph!” said Jack, “pretty well--six o’ one side and half-a-dozen of the other--much of a muchness--you understand, eh!--all outside--plating, as I call it.”

Here the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Stubbs, who announced that Mr. Brag’s groom had just arrived from London, on the top of the coach, which had set him down at the corner of the cross road.

“Let him come in,” said Brag, with an air of the most exalted dignity.

The lad made his appearance, dripping, like Niobe, all tears.

“Well, what made you so late?” said Brag.

“Couldn’t git down afore, sir,” said the lad.

“Well,” said his master, “go get yourself something to eat, and see to the horses.”

“I wanted to say a word about the horses, sir,--please,” said the lad.

“Well,” said Brag, “you may say what you have to say; you are not afraid of that stranger, I suppose.”

“No, sir,” said the boy, “I’m not afraid o’ anybody, but I didn’t know I was to say what I had to say, out.”

“Say,” said Jack, waving his half-emptied tumbler over his head--“‘Say on,’ as the chap at the theātre says.”

“Mr. Figgs,” said the boy, “wishes to know whether you want both them ’ere horses as is here any longer this week, or if one will do, as he has an opportunity of letting one or both on ’em to gemmen as pays ready money; and if so be you keeps ’em both, you’ll be pleased to send up the stumpy by to-night’s post.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” said Brag, his cheeks turning as white as chalk, his hair seeming to uncurl, and his whole countenance assuming the appearance of a detected pickpocket--“how good!--how deuced good, eh! Ha, ha,--what! my own horses!”

“Not your own horses, sir,” said the boy, “they are _his_ horses, you know, sir, and--”

“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Brag; “I think I ought to know whose horses they are better than he;--get out,--go and look after the nags--before you get anything to eat--and I will come out to you presently.”

Of all the curs unhung, there is none so awfully contemptible as a drivelling braggart. The wretched cockney seemed to quail before his associate, whom, as we know, he imagined to be either a rider to some respectable house in the button line, or a small dealer travelling, as he called it, “on his own bottom.” He watched the glance of the eye of this man, whom he had before despised and bullied, to see what impression the detection of his miserable assumptions had made upon him; but the stranger, who had his own business to attend to, and who seemed fully occupied by his own thoughts, evinced no alteration either in look or manner when he heard his contemptible companion exposed by the stable-keeper’s menial. Why he was not much affected by this _denouement_, we may perhaps shortly discover.

“What fools servants are!” said Jack, when he _could_ speak--stirring up a bit of lemon-peel from the bottom of his glass, and keeping his eyes steadily fixed upon the object and operation during the utterance of his remark.

What the stranger thought of masters, was not to be collected from either his words or his looks.

“Figgs is a fool too,” said Brag, when he had rallied; “I wonder what _he_ means.”

The stranger, who merely recollected the history of his companion’s stud, all elaborately detailed, did not by any means exert himself to elucidate the mysteries of the liveryman’s stables. He was perfectly satisfied with the affair as it stood, and there an end.

“I believe,” said Brag, breaking what appeared a most uncomfortable silence, and which, as pretenders invariably do, he fancied arose from a conviction in the other gentleman’s mind that he was a “humbug,”--“I believe that these fellows try to worry one into buying, by such tricks as these: however, I flatter myself I am pretty well known about London, and if I have any interest with the Master of the horse, not one of Figgs’s animals sets foot into the Royal stables,--there I _have_ an influence.”

The stranger merely looked, and finished his one glass of Stubbs’s particular, to Brag’s two; which one he had been persuaded to imbibe upon the very just principle of repelling external cold by internal warmth. It was clear that the cockney had been hit hard by the stupidity of his boy, as he called him--who, in fact, was not his; and odd enough to say, however pleased he might have been to escape anything like a cross-examination from his companion, he was rather vexed than not, that the said companion did not appear to take sufficient interest in his proceedings to inquire any farther into particulars.

“The weather does not seem to clear up,” said the stranger, walking towards the window; “I am not quite sure what is best to be done.”

“As for me,” said Brag, “I shall be a fixture for the night, if it holds on so badly.”

“I must get home by dinner-time,” said the stranger.

“Oh!” said Brag, “then this is not your dinner.”

“No,” said the stranger. “I believe in point of fact it _is_, but nominally it is not; I have fifteen miles to ride before I get home. I suppose one might on an emergency get a chaise here?”

“Not here,” said Brag; “I am always obliged, when I want horses, to send down to the George,--two miles from this;--but that makes no difference, I’ll tell my boy to run down if you want them:--are you going towards town?”

“No,” said the stranger, and stranger he was in those parts, “my course is _from_ London.”

“Eh! oh!” said Brag, evidently desirous of finding out his associate’s pursuits. “I shall cobble up here for the night, I think;--I dare say Rachel will make my tea for me, and I shall be uncommon comfortable, and no mistake. I like the--what do the French call it?--the ‘despipere in poco,’ or something of that sort, as Lord Tommy says;--so here I stop. I have nothing to do, no business, no call, no tie, except that unhappy Mrs.--did I tell you her name?--yes I did,--Mrs. Dallington and her sister Blanche. They must wait--can’t ride through the rain for them, eh!”

At this moment a remarkably neat, well appointed travelling carriage, drawn by four bright bays, preceded by an outrider, and in the rumble of which were two strapping servants, drove up to the door of the small ostelry--the steeds all thorough bred, were foaming and champing the bit, and the party within evidently in high spirits. The halt was called just to wash out the mouths of the horses, which were, as it appeared, making a long stage.

“I say,” said Brag, “these are somebodies:--what nags!--did you ever see such a turn out;--that’s what I call going it--straight up, right down, and no mistake. Let’s just go out and have a look at ’em.”

Brag led the way--the stranger implicitly followed; the moment he exhibited his person by the side of the cockney, a shout of surprise and delight echoed from the carriage.

“So, here you are!” cried the youngest of the _parti carré_. “What _have_ you been doing here?”

“Doing!” said the stranger; “why you don’t expect a man to ride to an archery meeting through a torrent!”

“My dear love,” said a lady in the carriage, “are you quite sure you have not got wet?”

“Not the least,” said the stranger; “for I took the precaution of halting here, and getting some luncheon in very agreeable society. But, perhaps, you will let _me_ in turn inquire why you have taken this road.”

“Partly, I believe,” said a young man who turned out to be the stranger’s son, “by mistake,--the weather was so desperate that the whole affair was a _coup manqué_, and we were glad enough to scramble away as well as we could; but, however, you will now come with _us_; they say it is an ill wind that blows nobody good.”

“You may rely upon my housing myself in the carriage,” said the stranger, “even at the hazard of crowding you. Harrison, stay behind, and bring home my horse in the course of the evening, and pay my bill here; don’t hurry back, for I rode rather hard in coming.”

The ladies seemed delighted at the acquisition which they had made to their party “inside,” and the stranger, with his foot on the step of the carriage, took off his hat and made a low bow to Brag, who stood looking on in a state of amaze and wonderment arising from the extraordinary fact, that anybody who really lived in the society of which he was permitted to catch occasional glimpses, could seriously sit down and enjoy mutton chops in a small alehouse, without disclosing his rank or talking of his connexions.

The carriage drove off,--splashed a little of the mud upon Brag’s delicate nose, and left, according to the stranger’s directions, one of the servants behind, who upon scanning the figure of the cockney sportsman, turned away from him with an air of dignity which his master had never assumed; and whose remarkably smart leathers and tops were so much better “got up” than Brag’s ever were, (although when he wore leathers he always devoted a certain portion of the morning to his own personal care of them,) that the unhappy creature cowered before the menial of the man, whom because he was plainly dressed, and assumed nothing in his manner, he had treated as if he were an inferior.

“I say, sir,” said Brag to the man as he was walking towards the stable, “may I ask who the gentleman is, who stepped into that carriage, and has left you to take home his horse?”

“That’s _my_ lord,” said Harrison, so was the man named.

“And what lord may he be?” said Brag.

“Don’t you know _my_ lord, sir?” said Harrison; “I thought everybody knew him,--Lord Ilfracombe. That’s my Lady, and his son Lord Dawlish, and Lady Dawlish, and Lady Bloomville, in the carriage.”

“Indeed! five insides!” said Brag: “and who was the young lady with the veil?”

“Lady Fanny Smartly,” said the man, and passed on to look after his lord’s horse.

Jack stood as if petrified: he felt his ears tingle, his knees shake,--the mingled impudence and folly of his conduct came full upon him, like a double-headed shot. Here were all his intimate friends whom he had never seen before, conjured up, as it were, to ruin him in the estimation of the head of the family, whom he had denounced to himself as a queer one, a bore, a kill-joy, and a wet blanket. He had not the power to stir, nor would he have moved from the place where he stood, with his eyes swimming and his head whirling, if the stable-boy from Figgs’s had not just begged him to make up his mind as to the horse he would keep.

Jack, for a minute roused to a sense of his absurdity, gave his answer, and retired to the house; where having in due time recovered the spirits or callousness which generally upheld him, he rang for some tea,--a beverage in which the subjects of Cockaigne delight, and which was in the course of half-an-hour brought him by a dirty red-headed boy; Rachel Stubbs having gone over to her aunt’s, on purpose to get out of the way of his nasty impertinences.