whitewash to my own—that’s all. File my petition and schedule to-morrow, come out on bail on Saturday—in three weeks have my hearing—and then—why then we’ll begin again with all the old scores rubbed off—that’s all! A glass of wine, old fellow, just to gulp down this little contre-danse I think you fine people call it?”
“If it’s the same thing to you, Mr. Chessells, I’d prefer it at the Peacock, our house opposite the Cross, you know.”
“Good—the last thing, eh?—a sort of viaticum just to console one for that parting which must happen to friends fond even as we are, eh?”
“Just so.”
“It ain’t flattery, Mr. Singleton Jones; it ain’t, I assure you. For though I didn’t exactly seek your acquaintance, I must admit that you’ve been ‘so clear in your great office,’ that I not only forgive you ‘the deep damnation of this taking off,’ but sincerely regret that so young a friendship must so soon terminate.
“Had we never met, or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted!”
And he hummed the words in a wild devil-may-care sort of spirit which showed the intensity of that disgust he was making such efforts to conceal.
I bowed my thanks, but though I assured him that I was more than rewarded for the great trouble I had taken, &c., I confess that my assent to each new evidence of my friend’s cleverness was laden with an uneasy sense of the insecurity of the tenure by which I held him; for though he had evidently been trained as a child in the way he was now to walk, there was no strong appearance that he would not depart out of it if he got a decent chance.
Hailing a cab, therefore, that happened to be passing, I felt unspeakably relieved, as you may think, when I saw him safely deposited in its interior. We reached, without accident, our destination, and satisfied that he was in “the safe keeping” to which he was legally privileged, I felt at length at liberty to congratulate myself on “my first Ca Sa,” and to claim the five pounds that were to reward its success.
THE DERBY DAY.
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Preliminary Canter.
There was a little tea-party at Mrs. Winterbottom’s at Lorenzo Villa, on Wednesday, the 16th of May. Lorenzo Villa is situated in the delightful suburb of Brompton; but in spite of the dramatic character of the locality, Lorenzo Villa is a serious villa, given up to the cultivation of gravities and respectabilities of all kinds—against which I have not a word to say when they are not assumed; but which are sometimes funny to the eyes of the unprejudiced observer, when practice and profession are not exactly in harmony.
That night at Mrs. Winterbottom’s, when the tea and the merriment ran fast and furious, and the muffins and Sally Lunns had got a little into the heads of the amiable assembly, Mrs. W. stated that it was a comfort to her in a perverse age to