“Want yer horse held, Major?” said he, leaning his huge, dirty hand on the white charger’s mane. “Haven’t seen your honour since we won so cleverly at Hampton—no offence, Major!”
“None whatever, my good fellow,” said the Major, who, by the way, was never in a hurry, though few men loved going fast better; “none whatever; but I’m busy now, I’ve no time to stop. Good-day to you.”
“Well, but, Major, see,” pleaded Mr. Fibbes, still smoothing the white horse’s mane, “I’ve got something at my place you would like to look at—she’s a real beauty, she is—I refused five sovereigns for her this blessed mornin’; for I said, says I, no, says I, not till the Major has seen her, ’cause she is a rare one—not that you care for such in a general way, Major, but if once you clapped eyes on ‘Jessie,’ you’d never rest till you got her down at the barracks. I never see such a one.”
“Such a what?” inquired D’Orville, gradually waxing curious about such manifold perfections.
“Why, such an out-an’-outer,” retorted Mr. Fibbes, half angrily; “none of your brindles—I can’t abide a brindle—they may be good, but they look so wulgar. No, no, Jessie’s none of your brindles.”
“Well, but what is she, my good fellow?” said the Major; “I can’t stay here all day.”
“Bul,” replied Mr. Fibbes, throwing into the monosyllable an expression of mingled anger and contempt, which, having given the Major sufficient time to digest, he followed up by the real topic on which he was anxious to enlarge. “No offence, Major,” he repeated, “but I’ve got something else to say—you’ll excuse me, sir—but you’ve stood a friend to me, and I won’t see you put upon. Major, there’s a screw loose here—it’s not on the square, you understand.”
“What do you mean?” said the Major, amused in spite of himself, at the ungainly nods and winks with which Mr. Fibbes eked out his mysterious communication.
“Well, Major,” replied his informant, “what I mean is this here. Some men would hold out in my place, and I’ve seen the day when my information was worth as much as my neighbours’; but when I’ve to do with a real gent, why, I trusts to him, and he gives what he pleases. Now, Major, look at that there house—it’s a good house up-stairs and down, fixtures and furniture all complete, I make no doubt—Major, there’s a man of straw in that house.” Mr. Fibbes paused, having delivered himself of this oracular piece of information; but, finding his listener less interested in the discovery of the artificial stranger than he had reason to expect, he proceeded in his own way to clear up his metaphor. “What I says is this—a bargain’s a bargain; now the young woman as owns that house has got the boot on the other leg—my information’s good, Major, you may depend on it; there’s another horse in the stable, sir—there’s a young gent as owns all the property they keep such a talk about; I won’t ask ye to believe my naked word, Major” (such a request, indeed, would have been superfluous), “but what should you say if I was to tell you—I’ve spoke to the party as has seen the will?”
“Why, I should say that if you have any information that is really well-authenticated, I’ll pay you fairly for it, as I always have done,” replied D’Orville, unmoved as usual, though in his innermost heart a tide of doubts and hopes and fears was swelling up, in strange tumultuous confusion.