Having continued his occupation till his friend’s small stock of patience was becoming well-nigh exhausted, Hazlehurst closed the epistle, muttering to himself—“Well! they know best, I suppose—but I don’t admire the scheme, all the same—” then, turning towards his companion, he continued aloud—“I beg your pardon, my dear fellow! but the governor’s letter contains a budget of family politics, which is, of course, more or less interesting to me, especially as, in the event of certain contingencies, he talks of increasing my allowance, but you’re looking sentimental—what’s the matter?”
“Oh! nothing,” was the reply, “only that fellow Markum has been boring about the rabbits; he says we’ve worked them quite enough, and that the foxes will be pitching into the pheasants if they can’t get plenty of rabbits to eat, and that so much shooting will make the birds wild before the 1st.—I know it all as well as he does—there ought not to be another gun fired on the property till the 1st of September, but then what is a fellow to do with himself? I might go to Paris—but I’ve been there and done it all—besides I hate their dissipation, it bores me to death; London is empty, and if it wasn’t, it’s worse than Paris—more smoke and less fun. I’d start to America, and do Niagara, and all the other picturesque dodges, only, if the wind were to turn restive, or anything go wrong in the boiler-bursting line, I might be delayed and miss the first day of partridge shooting, so it would not do to risk it.”
“By no means,” rejoined Hazlehurst, shaking his head with an air of mock solemnity—“but luckily I’ve a better plan to propose; I must make my way home at once—you shall come with me, and stay till we are all mutually tired of each other.”
“But your father and mother?” urged Coverdale.
“Are more anxious than I am on the subject. Read that, you unbelieving Jew!” So saying, Hazlehurst turned down a portion of his letter, and handed it to Coverdale; it ran thus—“Mind you bring your friend with you; independently of our desire to become acquainted with one who has shown you such unvarying kindness, Mr. Coverdale is just the person to make up the party.”
“Yes, they’re very kind,” began Coverdale, returning the letter, “very kind, but—”
“But what, man,” rejoined Hazlehurst quickly, “we want you to come to us; you have not only no other engagement, but actually don’t know what to do with yourself, and yet you hesitate. However, to come to the point at once, I ask you plainly, and expect a plain answer—where’s the hitch?”
“Well done, most learned counsel, that is the way to browbeat a witness, and no mistake,” replied Coverdale, laughing at his friend’s vehemence; “however, I won’t provoke any farther display of your forensic talents by attempting to prevaricate. The fact is, I know you’ve a bevy of sisters, she cousins, and what not, very charming girls, I dare say; but you see I’m not fit for women’s society, and that’s the truth of it—I’ve chosen my line—I know what suits me best—and I dare say I shall live and die a bachelor, as the old Admiral did before me. I know what women are, and what they expect of one; if a fellow happens to be a little bit rough and ready, they call him a bear, and vow he’s got no soul; ’gad, that’s what the Turks say of them, by-the-bye!—Poetical justice; eh?”
“My dear boy, you’ll excuse my saying so, but you really are talking great nonsense,” interrupted Hazlehurst; “You’re a thorough gentleman in mind, manners, and appearance, if I know the meaning of the term, and neither my sisters, nor my cousin (there is but one), have such bad taste as to prefer a finical fop to a fine manly fellow like yourself—no, they’re more likely to fall into the other extreme.”
“And that would be the worst of the two by long odds,” exclaimed Harry aghast; “only fancy me with a wife in the shooting-season—bothering me to stay at home with her, or to drive her out in a four-wheeled arm-chair with a pair of little hopping rats of ponies, that the best whip in the three kingdoms could not screw above six miles an hour out of, if he were to flog their hides off; or, worse still, to take me boxed up in a close carriage to call upon somebody’s grandmother, and I breaking my heart all the time to be blazing away at the partridges. I know what it is—I was staying down in Leicestershire, before I went abroad, with poor Phil Anderton, as stanch a sportsman, and as thoroughly good a fellow, as ever drew trigger, before he married Lady Mirvinia Bluebas. Well, they hadn’t been coupled six months before she’d got him so tight in hand that he daren’t smoke a cigar without a special licence. The first season, she let him shoot Wednesdays and Fridays, and hunt Thursdays and Saturdays. The next year she made him sell off his guns, dogs, and horses, and carried him over to the Continent. What was the result?—why, the poor fellow became so bored and miserable, that he took to gambling, lost every farthing he had in the world at roulette, and—didn’t blow his brains out; so my lady has the pleasure of keeping him, and living herself, upon five hundred a-year pin-money.”