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“Is Mrs Trelyan at home?” he said; and Tiny Rea laid her hand upon her sisters arm.
“Yes, young man,” said the old lady, shading her eyes, and gazing at the strongly-built figure before her. “I’m Mrs Trelyan, and what may you want?”
“To see how you are, granny. I’m Richard Trevor.”
“And – and – ” cried the old woman, letting fall her net as she rose slowly and laid her hand upon his arm; “and only a minute ago I was talking about you, and declaring you’d never be such a man as your father. My dear boy, how you have grown.”
“One does grow in twelve years, granny,” said the young man. “Well, I’m glad to see you alive and hearty.”
“Thank you, my boy,” said the old lady; and then turning and pointing to the wall, “Look!” she said, “that’s the very stick that I took away from you one day for teasing my hens. You were a bad boy. You know you were.”
“I suppose I was,” said the young man, smiling. “But I beg pardon; you have company, granny.”
“Oh, that’s only Mr Mervyn, my dear, and he’s going; and those are only the two girls from Tolcarne. I let them come and see me sometimes, but they’re going now.”
“Mr Mervyn,” said the young man, holding out his hand, which was taken in a strong grip, “I am glad to meet so near a neighbour; perhaps you will introduce me to the ladies?”
“That I will,” said Mr Mervyn, heartily. “Mr Trevor!”
“It’s Squire Trevor now, Mr Mervyn,” said the old lady, with some show of impatience.
“I beg pardon,” said Mr Mervyn, smiling. “Squire Trevor, your very near neighbours, Miss Rea, Miss Finetta Rea, of Tolcarne.”
“Ladies whom I have had the pleasure of meeting before,” said Trevor, with a smile.
And then, in a confusion of bows, the two girls made their retreat, followed by Mr Mervyn.
“Oh, Fin, how strange!” exclaimed Tiny; “it’s the gentleman who struck that man at the race.”
“Yes,” exclaimed Fin; “and that horrid little creature’s sure to be close behind.”
Sam Jenkles Prepares for an Expedition
“There you are, Ratty,” said Sam Jenkles, sticking a small yellow sunflower in each of his horse’s blinkers, before mounting to his perch and driving out of the yard. “Now you look ’andsome. Only recklect ’andsome is as ’andsome does; so just putt your right leg fust for once in a way.”
He walked round the horse, giving it a smooth here and a smooth there with his worn-out glove, and patting its neck, before walking back, and beginning to button-up for the day.
“Blest if ever I see such a tail in my life as he’s got,” he muttered. “Wonder what a hartificial one ’ud cost. It aint no kind o’ use to comb it, ’thout you want to comb it all out and leave no tail at all I wouldn’t care if it warn’t so ragged.”
It certainly was a melancholy-looking tail, but only in keeping with the rest of the horse’s personal appearance, which was of the most dejected – dispirited. If it had only been black, the steed would have been the beau ideal beast for a workhouse hearse; as he was of a dingy brown, he was relegated to a cab.
“What’s the matter, Sam?” said a cleaner, coming up – a man with a stable pail of water in one hand, a spoke-brush in the other, and a general exemplification of how, by degrees, Nature will make square people fit into round holes, and the reverse; for, by the constant carriage of stable pails, the man’s knees had gone in, and out of the perpendicular, so as to allow for the vessels’ swing.
“What’s the matter, Buddy? Why, everythink. Look at that there ’oss – look at his tail.”
“Well, he aint ’andsome, suttunly,” said the helper.
“’Andsome!” exclaimed Sam; “no, nor he aint anythink else. He won’t go, nor he won’t stop. If you wants him to ’old ’is ’ead up, he ’angs it down; and if you wants him to ’old it down, he shoves it up in the air, and goes shambling along like a sick camel. He’s all rules of contrairy.”
“’Oppin’ about like a little canary,” chimed in the helper.
“’Oppin’ about!” said Sam, in a tone of disgust. “I should just like to see him, if on’y for once in a way. I tell yer what it is, Buddy, I believe sometimes all he does is to lift his legs up, one at a time, an’ lean up agin his collar. Natur’ does the rest.”
“Werry likely,” said Buddy; “but you can’t expect everything in a cab ’oss.”
“Heverythink?” said Sam. “I don’t expect everythink; I only want some-think; and all you’ve got there,” he continued, pointing with one thumb over his shoulder at the unfortunate Ratty, “is so much walking cats’-meat.”
“Yes, he aint ’andsome, suttunly,” said Buddy again, screwing up one side of his face. “But why don’t you smooth him over? Try kindness, and give the whip a ’ollerday.”
“Kindness – whip – ’ollerday! Why, I’m like a father to ’im. Look here.”
Sam went to the little boot at the back of his cab, and tugged out the horse’s nose-bag, which was lined at the bottom with tin, so that it would have held water.
“See that?” said Sam.
“Yes: what’s it for?” said Buddy.
“Beer,” said Sam, fiercely, “beer! Many’s the ’arfpint I’ve poured in there along of his chopped meat, jest to cheer him up a bit, and he aint got no missus to smell his breath. I thought that ’ud make ’im go if anythink would.”
“Well, didn’t it?” said Buddy, rubbing his ear with the spoke-brush.
“Didn’t it?” said Sam. “Lets out at me with his orf ’ind leg, and then comes clay mill, and goes round and round till he oughter ’ave been dizzy, but he worn’t. There never was sech a ungrateful beast.”
Buddy grinned as Sam stuffed back the nose-bag, the horse shaking his head the while.
“Try it on me, Sam,” said Buddy, as the driver prepared to mount. “I won’t let out with no orf ’ind legs.”
Sam winked, and climbed to his perch.
“What’s the flowers for, Sam?” said the helper.
“The missus. Goin’ to call for her, and drive her to Upper ’ollerway,” said Sam, “afore I goes on the rank.”
“Oh, will you tell her,” said Buddy, earnestly, “as Ginger’s ever so much better, and can a’most putt his little leg to the ground? He eats that stuff she brought him like fun.”
“What stuff was that?” said Sam, gathering up the reins.
“Sorter yaller jally,” said Buddy.
“What, as smells o’ lemons?” said Sam.
“Yes, that’s it,” said Buddy; “he just do like it.”
“How long’s he been bad now?”
“Twelve weeks,” said Buddy; “and he’s been ’most worn to skin and bone; but he’s pulling up now. Takes his corn.”
“Mornin’,” said Sam.
He tried to start; but Batty moved sidewise, laid a blinker against the whitewashed wall of the yard, and rubbed it up and down, so that it had to be wiped over with a wet leather by Buddy; and when that was done, he tried to back the cab into a narrow stable door. After that, though, he seemed better, and began to go in a straight line.
“Tried that there game at a plate-glass winder t’other day,” said Sam, shouting over his shoulder as he left the yard. “He’d ha’ done it, too, if it hadn’t been for a lamp-post.”
Sam and his steed went gently out of Grey’s Inn Lane towards Pentonville, where, in a little quiet street, Mrs Jenkles resided, and Sam began musing as he went along —
“I smelt that there stuff in the cupboard, and meant to ask her what it was, but I forgot. On’y to think of her making that up, and taking it to poor Buddy’s little bairn! Well, she’s a good sort, is the missus, on’y she will be so hard on me about a drop o’ beer. ’Old that there ’ead still, will yer? What are yer lookin’ arter, there? Oh! that cats-meat barrer. Ah! yer may well shy at that, Ratty; I don’t wonder at it. Now, then, get on, old boy, the missus ’ll be waiting.”
On reaching Spring Place, where Sam dwelt, the horse objected. He was sawing along in a straightforward way, when Sam drew one rein, with the consequence that the horse’s head came round, his long neck bending till the animal’s face was gazing at him in a dejected, lachrymose fashion: Ratty seeming to say, as plainly as looks would express it, “What are you doing?” while all the time the legs went straight forward up Pentonville Hill.
They had got twenty yards past Spring Place before Sam could pull the horse up; and then he had to get down to take it by the head and turn it in a very ignominious fashion.
“Jest opposite a public, too,” said Sam. “I never did see such a haggravating beast as you are, Ratty. Here, come along. It aint no wonder as fellows drinks, with a place offering ’em the stuff every five minutes of their lives, and when they’ve got a Ratty to lead ’em right up to it. Come on, will yer?”
Mrs Jenkles was standing at the door ready, in a blue bonnet and red Paisley shawl – for she was a woman of her word. She had said that she would go up and see those people, and Sam had promised to drive her.
Going the Rounds
Fin was quite right. They had not gone above a couple of hundred yards down the lane, with Mr Mervyn between them, swinging his empty soup tin, when they became aware of a loud whistling, as of some one practising a polka. Then it would cease for a few moments, and directly after begin again.
“There’s somebody,” said Fin; and then, turning a sharp corner, they came suddenly on Mr Frank Pratt, perched in a sitting posture on the top of a huge, round lith of granite, with his back to them, and his little legs stretching out almost at right angles. He was in his threatened tweeds, a natty little deerstalker’s hat was cocked on one side of his head; in one hand he held a stick, and in the other a large pipe, from which he drew refreshment between the strains of the polka he tried to whistle.
Mr Frank Pratt was evidently enjoying the beauty of the place after his own particular fashion; for, being a short man, he had a natural love for elevated places. As a boy, he had delighted in climbing trees, and sitting in the highest fork that would bear him, eating cakes or munching apples; as a man, cakes and apples had given way to extremely black pipes, in company with which he alternately visited the top of the Monument, the Duke of York’s column, and the golden gallery of Saint Paul’s, where he regretted that the cost was eighteen-pence to go any higher. In these places, where it was strictly forbidden, he indulged in surreptitious smokes, from which his friends deduced the proposition that if not the cakes, probably the apples had been stolen.
The tail stone then being handy, Mr Pratt was enjoying himself, when he suddenly became aware of steps behind, and hopped down in a most ungraceful fashion to stare with astonishment so blank, that by the time he had raised his hat Fin had gone by with her chin raised in the air, and a very disdainful look upon her countenance, and her sister, with a slightly heightened colour, had plunged into conversation with Mr Mervyn.
Pratt stood half paralysed for a few moments, watching the party, until a turn in the lane hid them from sight, and then he refilled and lit his pipe, from which the burning weed had fallen.
“It’s a mistake,” he said at last, between tremendous puffs at his pipe. “It’s impossible. I don’t believe it. One might call it a hallucination, only that the beardless female face is so similar in one woman to another that a man easily makes a mistake. Those cannot be the same girls that we saw at the steeplechase – it isn’t possible; but there is a resemblance, certainly; and, treating the thing philosophically, I should say here we have the real explanation of what is looked upon as infidelity in the male being.”
A few puffs from the pipe, and then Mr Pratt reclimbed to his perch upon the stone.
“I’ll carry that out, and then write it down as a position worthy of argument. Yes, to be sure. Here it is. A man falls in love – say, for the sake of argument, at first sight, with a pretty girl, quite unknown to him before, upon a racecourse. Symptoms: a feeling of sympathetic attraction; a throbbing of the pulses; and the heart beating bob and go one. Say he gets to know the girl; is engaged to her; and is then separated by three or four hundred miles.”
A few more puffs, and sundry nods of the head, and then Mr Pratt went on.
“He there encounters another girl, whose face and general appearance are so much like the face and general appearance of girl number one, that his secondary influences – to wit, heart, pulses, and sympathies generally – immediately give signals; love ensues, and he declares and is accepted by girl number two, while girl number one says he is unfaithful. The man is not unfaithful; it is simply an arrangement of Nature, and he can’t help himself. Infidelity, then, is the same thing in a state of change. Moral: Nature has no business to make women so much alike.”
Mr Pratt got down once more from his perch, and began to stroll up the lane, to encounter Trevor at the end of a few minutes.
“Did you meet any one?” was the inquiry.
“Yes,” said Pratt, “a gentleman and two ladies.”
“Well?”
“Well?”
“Did you not know them?”
“Ah!” said Pratt, “then you, too, noticed the similarity of feature, did you?”
“Similarity?”
“Yes; wonderfully like the ladies we met at the steeplechase, were they not?”
Richard Trevor looked hard in his friend’s face for a moment, and then they walked on side by side; for at a turn of the lane they met the young keeper, who had so suddenly changed the aspect of the encounter on the course.
“Ah, Humphrey!” said Trevor, “I’m glad I’ve met you. I’ll have a walk round the preserves.”
The young keeper touched his hat, changed the double gun from one shoulder of his well-worn velveteen coat to the other, whistled to a setter, and led the way to a stone stile.
“Another curious case of similarity of feature,” said Trevor, laughing.
“Well, no – I’ll give in now,” said Pratt; “but I say, Dick, old fellow, ought coincidences like this to occur out of novels?”
“Never mind that,” said Trevor, “the keeper here, who used to be my playmate as a boy, was as much astonished as I was – weren’t you, Humphrey?”
“Well, sir,” said the young man, “when I see you th’ other morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes like, that the gentleman who’d pummelled that fellow was the one I’d come up to London to meet. I saw you, too, sir,” he said, touching his hat to Pratt.
“Yes, my man,” said Pratt, “and felt my toe. I’m sorry to find you did, for you’ve blown up one of the most beautiful propositions I ever made in my life.”
“Well, now then,” said Trevor, “I’ll see about matters with you, Lloyd; but, by the way, you had better be Humphrey, on account of your father.”
“Yes, sir; Humphrey, please, sir,” said the young man.
“Well, now then, as we go on,” said Trevor, “if it don’t bore you, Pratt, we’ll have a talk about farm matters.”
“Won’t bore me,” said Pratt; “I’m going in for the country gentleman while I stay.”
“Well, then, Humphrey, how are the crops!”
“Well, sir,” said Humphrey. “Ah, Juno! what are you sniffing after there?” This to the young dog, which seemed to have been born with a mission to push its head up rabbit burrows too small for the passage. “Well, sir, begging your pardon, but that dog’s took more looking after than e’er a one I ever had.”
“All right, go on,” said Trevor, following the man across a broad, rock-sided ditch, with a little brook at the bottom.
“Well, sir,” said the keeper, “the corn is – ”
“Here, I say, hold hard a minute! This isn’t Pall Mall, Trevor,” shouted Pratt. “How the deuce am I to get over that place?”
“Jump, man,” cried Trevor, laughing and looking back. “That’s nothing to some of our ditches.”
Pratt looked at the ditch, then down at his little legs, and then blew out his cheeks.
“Risk it,” he said, laconically; and, stepping back a few yards, he took a run, jumped, came short, and had to scramble up the bank, a little disarranged, but smiling and triumphant. “All right,” he said, “go on.”
“Corn is, on the whole, a fair crop, sir,” said Humphrey.
“And barley?”
