“Indeed!” returned Emily, looking very grave, with the exception of her eyes, which were laughing wickedly, “incipient spavin, perhaps.”
For a moment Mr. Slowkopf gazed at her in sheer amazement; then a faint consciousness of her meaning gradually dawned upon him, and he replied—
“Similarity of sound has not unnaturally misled you in regard to the import of my observation, Miss Emily: the Hock to which I alluded was not, as you conceive, the elbow-joint of a horse’s hind-leg, but a choice sample of Rhenish wine, hospitably produced by Mr. Selby for our gratification; in regard to which Mr. Carrington was pleased to observe that it was not the only good thing that came from Germany—a remark which I conceived might refer to the German school of theology, whence, by logical progression, I was led to doubt the soundness of the new rector’s doctrinal views.”
And having delivered himself of this ponderous explanation, Mr. Slowkopf rose up as suddenly as if he had been propelled by a spring, after the fashion of that much-enduring public character Jack-in-a-box, and abruptly taking leave of the two ladies, broke his shins over a chair, and was gone.
“Why, mamma dear, what has come to the creature?” exclaimed Emily: “is he going entirely to take leave of the few senses wherewith nature has so scantily endowed him?”
“You’re too pert to him, my love,” was the reply; “he’s a very excellent young man; and always drinking water at home, is naturally more elated by a glass or two of wine, than a less abstemious person would be.”
“Oh! that is the secret, is it—the wretch; I shall send him some teetotal tracts to-morrow. I’ve got ‘A Voice from the Pump,’ and ‘Cold Comfort for chilly Christians,’ still left: they’ll suit his case charmingly.”
And so saying, the incorrigible Rosebud tripped off to bed where, straightway falling asleep, she dreamed, that being in church, and the new rector turning out to be a fine young piebald centaur, she clearly perceived, as he cantered up the pulpit stairs, whisking a most unclerical switch tail, that he was decidedly spavined in the off hind-leg.