“Aunt, Mr. Dodd proposes a race home.”
“With all my heart. How much start are we to give him?”
“None at all,” said David; “are you ready? Then give way,” and he started down the hill at a killing pace.
The equestrians were obliged to walk down the hill, and when they reached the bottom David was going as the crow flies across some meadows half a mile ahead. A good canter soon brought them on a line with him, but every now and then the turns of the road and the hills gave him an advantage. Lucy, naturally kind-hearted, would have relaxed her pace to make the race more equal, but Talboys urged her on; and as a horse is, after all, a faster animal than a sailor, they rode in at the front gate while David was still two fields off.
“Come,” said Mrs. Bazalgette, regretfully, “we have beat him, poor fellow, but we won't go in till we see what has become of him.”
As they loitered on the lawn, Henry the footman came out with a salver, and on it reposed a soiled note. Henry presented it with demure obsequiousness, then retired grinning furtively.
“What is this—a begging-letter? What a vile hand! Look, Lucy; did you ever? Why, it must be some pauper.”
“Have a little mercy, aunt,” said Lucy, piteously; “that hand has been formed under my care and daily superintendence: it is Reginald's.”
“Oh, that alters the case. What can the dear child have to say to me! Ah! the little wretch! Send the servants after him in every direction. Oh, who would be a mother!”
The letter was written in lines with two pernicious defects. 1st. They were like the wooden part of a bow instead of its string. 2d. They yielded to gravity—kept tending down, down, to the righthand corner more and more. In the use of capitals the writer had taken the copyhead as his model. The style, however, was pithy, and in writing that is the first Christian grace—no, I forgot, it is the second; pellucidity is the first.