“Yes; and then you and Lancelot went flying over it as lightly as if he had wings, like that fabulous humbug Pegasus, that old Buzwig is always bothering us about. The copy-book says, ‘Practice before precept,’ and so say I. Why, you did not expect I was going to be such a muff as to stay behind, did you?”
“I was a fool if I did, at all events,” muttered Harry, sotto voce; then turning good-naturedly to the boy, he continued, “The copy-book also says, ‘What can’t be cured must be endured,’ does it not, Tom? So we must get out of the scrape as best we can. We’ll leave the pony at the nearest farm-house, and I’ll send my groom to doctor him—so lead him by the rein and come along.”
Of course, when they joined the rest of the party and told their misdeeds, Alice lamented over the pony’s troubles after the usual fashion of tender-hearted young ladies. Of course, Hazlehurst senior, discerning a long farrier’s bill in prospective, with the possibility of being coaxed out of a new pony as a not unlikely contingent result, was grumpy, as Governors usually are when they foresee a strain upon their purse strings; and of course, although these lamentations and threatenings were launched at the curly head of Master Tom, they yet glanced off that unimpressible substance, only to fall upon and overwhelm with shame and confusion Harry Coverdale, who began mentally to curse the day when, false to his own presentiments, he had yielded to his friend’s importunities, and suffered himself to become an inmate of Hazlehurst Grange.
Bent on avoiding young ladies, and having no taste for the society of old ones, Harry wandered about disconsolately, until, attracted by a dark archway and a worm-eaten winding staircase, which, as Master Tom expressed it, looked “jolly queer and ghostified;” he made his way up the mouldering steps until he found himself at the top of a battlemented tower, where he was repaid for the trouble of the ascent, by a beautiful and widely-extending view. Having contrived to get rid of the voluble and restless Etonian, Coverdale seated himself on a projecting fragment of masonry, and glancing round to see that he was not observed or observable, lit a cigar, and, his ruffled feelings being soothed by its mollifying influence, remained lazily watching the movements of the pleasure-seekers—his reflections running somewhat after the following fashion:—
“There’s old Crane maundering about after Alice as usual—don’t think he gets on with her though, rather t’other way—decided case of jibbing I should say. She looked awfully bored and frightened too, up in that phaeton with him; and no wonder either, for the old boy is nothing of a whip—I should be sorry to trust a cat of mine to his driving. Ah! she’s given him the slip, and that Miss Marsden has taken him in tow. I can’t make that woman out—she is so civil to him; perhaps she thinks the affair with Alice may miss fire, and she is looking out for the reversion of the cotton spinner herself. Arthur says she’s very poor, and that there are a large family of them; if so, it’s not a bad dodge, and, supposing she plays her cards well, one by no means unlikely to succeed. There’s that confounded puppy D’Almayne swaggering up to Alice, stroking his stupid moustaches—yes, and she smiles and takes his arm, of course—believes all his lies, and thinks him a hero, I dare say. Oh! the poor silly fools of women that can’t distinguish a man from a jackanapes—I should have fancied Alice had more sense; but they’re all alike. Look at the idiot simpering; that’s only to show his white teeth now: the brute has no idea of a real joke—hasn’t got it in him. Well, thank goodness, it’s no concern of mine: but if I were Crane, I’d interfere with his flirting rather. The fellow talks as if he were a dreadful fire-eater—I should like to try what he’s made of: but I expect it’s all talk and nothing else—I wish I could coax him into putting on the gloves with me some day—I’d astonish his moustaches for him. Well, he has walked her off at all events. I wonder where they’re going to. Are they? Yes—no—yes, by Jove, if he isn’t going to take her across that field which Tom and I rode through, where the bull was grazing—the brute is mischievous, too, or I am much mistaken—confound the fool, he’ll go and frighten the poor girl out of her senses, and, perhaps, get her hurt into the bargain; for, if the bull really is vicious, ten to one Moustaches loses pluck, and bolts, or something ridiculous. I’ve a great mind to follow them, it can do no harm, and may do some good—’gad I will too. Alice is far too pretty to be gored by a bull; besides, for Arthur’s sake, one is bound to take care of her—luckily, I’ve just finished the cigar, so off we go.”
Having arrived at this point in his meditations, Harry rose from his seat, ran lightly down the stairs till he reached a ruined window about six feet from the ground, through which he leaped, then settling into a long swinging trot, he ran, at a pace with which few could have kept up, in the direction taken by Alice and D’Almayne; they had, however, obtained so greatly the start of him, that they had already entered the field occupied by the dangerous bull, ere he had overtaken them.
It was a remarkably warm day—the field in which pastured the alarming bull was distant from the abbey ruins half-a-mile at the very least. Now, to jump through a window six feet or thereabouts from the ground, run at the top of one’s speed half-a-mile, leaping recklessly over two gates and a stile in the course of it; and to do all this in a state of anxious excitement on a day when the thermometer stands at 70° in the shade, naturally tends to make a man not only hot, but (if his temper be not semiangelic) cross also. At all events, Harry Coverdale was in the former, if not the latter, condition, when, panting and breathless, he overtook Alice Hazlehurst and Horace D’Almayne, half way across the dangerous field.