“A little to each, I should say,—eh, Beecher?” cried Grog, laughingly.
“Oh, don't appeal to him, papa. He only wants to vaunt his heroism the higher, because the fortress he guarded was so easy of assault!”
Beecher was ill-fitted to engage in such an encounter, and stammered out some commonplace apology for his own seeming want of gallantry.
“She's too much for us, Beecher,—too much for us. It's a pace we can't keep up,” muttered Grog in the other's ear. And Beecher nodded a ready assent to the speech.
“Well,” said Lizzy, gayly, “now that your anxieties are well over, I do entreat of you to unbend a little, and let us see the lively, light-hearted Mr. Annesley Beecher, of whose pleasant ways I have heard so much.”
“I used to be light-hearted enough once, eh, Davis?” said Beecher, with a sigh. “When you saw me first at the Derby—of, let me see, I don't remember the year, but it was when Danby's mare Petrilla won,—with eighteen to one 'given and taken' against her, the day of the race,—Brown Davy, the favorite, coming in a bad third,—he died the same night.”
“Was he 'nobbled'?” asked Lizzy, dryly.
“What do you mean?” cried Grog, gruffly. “Where did you learn that word?”
“Oh, I'm quite strong in your choice vocabulary,” said she, laughingly; “and you are not to fancy that in the dissipations of Aix I have forgotten the cares of my education. My guardian there set me a task every morning,—a page of Burke's Peerage and a column of the 'Racing Calendar;' and for the ninth Baron of Fitzfoodle, or the fifteenth winner of the Diddlesworth, you may call on me at a moment.”
The angry shadow on Davis's brow gradually faded away, and he laughed a real, honest, and good-humored laugh.