Mr. Fortescue was loquacious and confidential—he said he was fond of riding. Besides his two hours’ ride in Rotten-row, between five and seven in the morning, it was his custom to take a long journey on Sunday through the Middlesex meadows, sometimes as far as the hop-fields in Kent, and to spend his annual holiday upon the saddle, with no luggage but the carpet bag, which he strapped upon the pommel, and with no companions but the feathered choristers in the fields and the sweet odour of the wild flowers and the music of his horse’s hoofs.
Ashbrook thought him a jolly sort of fellow enough, genial and companionable—indeed, he was charmed with his discourse.
He abounded in anecdote, and revealed to their astonished mind much of the arcana and interior machineries of polite society, which are hidden from the uninitiated by a spangled but impenetrable veil.
He knew, or affected to know, a number of notabilities whose names had reached Patty through the medium of her friends, Lady Aveline and Lady Marolyn, and she was therefore under the full impression that Mr. Fortescue was intimately acquainted with many of the leading personages who figured in the fashionable world.
His manner was engaging, and he was scrupulously polite and respectful.
He hastened to assure his host and hostess that he was ignorant upon many subjects in which they were well versed, by asking them about farming and housewifery, and listened attentively to their explanations. In an incredibly short time he became on excellent terms with the master and mistress of Stoke Ferry, and they would not hear of his leaving on that day or the next.
Joe Doughty was sent round to the “Carved Lion” for the gentleman’s horse, and it was stalled at the farmhouse, carefully groomed, and got ready whenever its master needed it.
Thus matters went on for some days until at length a tacit agreement became established between them that Mr. Erric Fortescue should spend his holidays at Stoke Ferry Farm.
He appeared to be quite charmed with the establishment into which he had been by chance thrown. He went to bed with the linnet, rose with the lark, and breakfasted on fat bacon and home-made bread and butter at half-past seven. His life was one round of pleasure and happiness—so he averred.
After breakfast the horses would be saddled and brought round to the door by Joe, and Mr. Fortescue and Ashbrook would ride over the farm together.