MY HEALTH.
ome we return from otter-hunting. Tired, but expecting a "Nicht wi' Ruddock." He is to be at dinner, and a few very intimates are coming in the evening. The few "very intimates" have no distance to drive—merely a matter of eight miles or so.
From my window I hear carriages drawing up exactly at two minutes to seven o'clock. Punctuality in Cornwall is the soul of pleasure.
Odd: at the last moment I can't find either a collar or a white tie! "Come, Desperation, lend thy furious hold!" Rummage in the drawers, in the portmanteau. Staggered. Where can it be?—the collar, I mean. Rummage again. Getting hot and excited. Ought always to come down to dinner calm, cool, and collected. I shall be the only one late, and I hadn't to come twelve miles to dinner. No excuse except the real one,—"Couldn't find my collars, or a tie." Only one thing for it. Ring the bell, and ask servant.
"O yes. Sir! We were changing the drawers from this room to Master's. I dessay, Sir, they're in there." They are. Rapture!
Flash.—Stirring subject for operatic and descriptive music—A Gentleman's Toilet in Difficulties.
Next Difficulty.—Drop a stud suddenly. Hear it fall close by my foot. In fact, I feel, from some peculiar sensation in my foot, that it is here, on the floor, close to me. No. Hunt for it. Can't see it anywhere. [Mem.—Never travel without duplicate studs. Won't, another time.] Still stooping: feeling about the carpet. Hands getting dirty again, hair coming unbrushed, face growing warm and red.
Flash.—The stud being, as it were, an excrescence on the carpet, can be perceived by lying on the floor, (like an Indian listening to hear if anybody's coming,) and directing your eye in a right line. After this, clothes-brush required. Stud found at last exactly where I thought it had been at first.
Another Difficulty.—Time getting on. 7.10. Pendell by this time anxious below. Every one arrived. I picture to myself Ruddock in the drawing-room, filling up the mauvais quart d'heure by satirical reflections on the dandy (me) who hadn't time enough to beautify himself for dinner.
I should be down now, if it wasn't for the button on my collar-band. I feel that it's all over with it, if not touched gently. Once off, and worry will be my portion for the remainder of the evening. And I know what is the result of attempting to pin it.
Note.—"Curses not loud, but deep." Quotation adapted to circumstances.
Last Difficulty, I hope.—After treating the button with suppressed emotion, dash at the white tie. I find myself asking myself, "Why the washerwoman will fold it all wrong, and starch it so that the slightest crinkle shows?" I have no answer. Of course at any other moment I could tie it at once, and have done with it; but now first one end's too long, then the other end's too short; then, on the third trial, the middle part somehow gets hopelessly tucked into itself, and I am pulling at it, by mistake, for one of the ends. At last I get it something like all right, but not everything that could be desired. Waistcoat. Coat. Handkerchief! Where's handkerchief? Where is—... ha! Down-stairs.
Everybody waiting, evidently. Apology. "Ah!" says Pendell, "um—ah—now you've come, we'll—um——" and rings the bell.
I recognise some of our companions out otter-hunting to-day. Galaxy, too, of Cornish beauty, which means the darkest, brightest eyes and the clearest, freshest complexions. Not being introduced, I look about for Old Ruddock. There is an elderly gentleman sitting at a table looking over a photograph book. This is the nearest approach to Old Ruddock that I can see. Dinner announced. I take in Miss Bodd, of Popthlanack, and follow the Trelissacs, the Tregonies of Tregivel, and Major Penolver, with Mrs. Somebody of Somewhere. Whom Ruddock takes, I don't know.
A Discovery.—I am seated next to Old Ruddock of Ruddock, at dinner. Pendell introduces us. A hale, hearty, elderly gentleman, with, if any expression at all, rather a sleepy one, as if a very little over-feeding would send him into a doze.
Now then for a "Nicht wi' Ruddock!"
