“Oh, yes!” replied Fanny, smiling, and blushing slightly at thus suddenly becoming the topic of conversation; “that is, I used to delight in riding Frank's pony in days of yore; but he has not kept a pony lately.”
“That is easily remedied,” returned Harry; “I am certain some of our horses will carry a lady. I shall speak to Harris about it directly, and we'll have some rides together, Fanny; it was only this morning that I obtained my tyrant's permission to cross a horse once more,” he added, shaking his fist playfully at Ellis.
“The tyrant will agree to that more willingly than to your first request. What do you think, Fairlegh,” continued Ellis, appealing to me, “of his positively wanting to go out hunting?”
“And a very natural thing to wish too, I conceive,” replied Harry; “but what do you think of his declaring that, if I did not faithfully promise I would not hunt this season, he would go into the stables and divide, what he called in his doctor's lingo, the flexor metatarsi of every animal he found there, which, being interpreted, means neither more nor less than hamstring all the hunters.”
“Well, that would be better than allowing you to do anything which might disturb the beautiful process of granulation going on in your side. I remember, when I was a student at Guy's——”
“Come, doctor, we positively cannot stand any more of your 'Chronicles of the Charnel-house' this morning; you have horrified Miss Fairlegh already to such a degree that she is going to run away. If I should stroll down here again in the afternoon, Fanny, will you take compassion on me so far as to indulge me with a game of chess? I am going to send Frank on an expedition, and my father and Ellis are off to settle preliminaries with poor Mrs. Probehurt, so that I shall positively not have a creature to speak to. Reading excites me too much, and produces a state of—— What is it you call it, doctor?”
“I told you yesterday I thought you were going into a state of coma, when you fell asleep over that interesting paper of mine in the Lancet, 'Recollections of the Knife'; if that's what you call excitement,” returned Ellis, laughing——
“Nonsense, Ellis, how absurd you are!” rejoined Oak-lands, half-amused and half-annoyed at Ellis's remark; “but you have not granted my request yet, Fanny.”
“I do not think we have any engagement—mamma will, I am sure, be very happy”—began Fanny, with a degree of hesitation for which I could not account; but as I was afraid Oaklands might notice it, and attribute it to a want of cordiality, I hastened to interrupt her by exclaiming, “Mamma will be very happy—of course she will; and each and all of us are always only too happy to get you here, old fellow; it does one's heart good to see you beginning to look a little more like yourself again. If Fanny's too idle to play chess, I'll take compassion upon you, and give you a thorough beating myself.”
“There are two good and sufficient reasons why you will not do anything of the kind,” replied Oaklands: “in the first place, while you have been reading mathematics, I have been studying chess; and I think that I may, without conceit, venture to pronounce myself the better player of the two; and in the second place, as I told your sister just now, I am going to send you out on an expedition.”