"I really think poor Mr. Nappie was very badly used," said Mrs. Carbuncle.
"Of course he was," said Lord George;—"no man ever worse since hunting was invented. He was entitled to a dozen dinners and no end of patronage; but you see he took it out in calling your cousin Mr. Greystockings."
"I felt that blow," said Frank.
"I shall always call you Cousin Greystockings," said Lizzie.
"It was hard," continued Lord George, "and I understood it all so well when he got into a mess in his wrath about booking the horse to Kilmarnock. If the horse had been on the roadside, he or his men could have protected him. He is put under the protection of a whole railway company, and the company gives him up to the first fellow that comes and asks for him."
"It was cruel," said Frank.
"If it had happened to me, I should have been very angry," said Mrs. Carbuncle.
"But Frank wouldn't have had a horse at all," said Lizzie, "unless he had taken Mr. Nappie's."
Lord George still continued his plea for Mr. Nappie. "There's something in that, certainly; but, still, I agree with Mrs. Carbuncle. If it had happened to me, I should—just have committed murder and suicide. I can't conceive anything so terrible. It's all very well for your noble master to talk of being civil, and hoping that the horse had carried him well, and all that. There are circumstances in which a man can't be civil. And then everybody laughed at him! It's the way of the world. The lower you fall, the more you're kicked."
"What can I do for him?" asked Frank.