“Ah! I see, sold again! It's an easy thing to make a fool of me where women are concerned; they're a kind of cattle I never shall understand, if I were to live as long as Saint Methuselah, and take Old Parr's life pills twice a day into the bargain. Anything about a horse, now—”
“Then you'll postpone the gravel-pit performance ad infinitum?” interrupted I.
“Eh? yes! it would be a pity to go and sacrifice the new tandem, if it is not absolutely necessary to one's peace of mind, so I shall think better of it this time,” was the rejoinder.
“By the way,” resumed Lawless, as we drove through Heathfield Park, “I must not forget that I've got to immolate Shrimp on the altar of my aspersed reputation—call his master a 'scamp,' the amphibious little reprobate? a brat that's neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red-herring—that spent his pitiful existence in making mud pies in a gutter, till I was kind enough to—”
“Run over him, and break his arm,” added I.
“Exactly,” continued Lawless, “and a famous thing it was for him too. Just see the advantages to which it has led; look at the education I have given him; he can ride to hounds better than many grooms twice his age, and bring you a second horse, in a long run, just at the nick of time when you want it, as fresh, with that featherweight on its back, as if it had only just come out of the stable; he can drive any animal that don't pull too strong for him, as well as I can myself; he can brew milk-punch better than a College Don, and drink it like an undergraduate; he can use his fists as handily as—Ben Caunt, or the Master of T——y, and polish off a boy a head taller than himself in ten minutes, so that his nearest relations would not recognise him; and he won five pounds last year in a Derby sweepstakes, besides taking the long odds with a pork-butcher, and walking into the piggycide to the tune of thirty shillings. No,” continued Lawless, who had quite worked himself into a state of excitement, “whatever follies I may have been guilty of, nobody can accuse me of having neglected my duty in regard to that brat's education; and now, after all my solicitude, the young viper goes and spreads reports that a 'scamp,' meaning me, is about to marry your sister! I'll flay him alive, and put him in salt afterwards!”
“But, my dear Lawless, out of the host of servants at Heathfield, how do you know it was Shrimp who did it?”
“Oh, there's no mischief going on that he's not at the bottom of; besides, a boy is never the worse for a flogging, for if he has not done anything wrong beforehand, he's sure to make up for it afterwards; so it comes right in the end, you see.”
Thus saying, he roused the leader by a scientific application of the thong, dashed round the gravel-sweep, and brought his horses up to the hall-door in a neat and artistlike manner.