When Cosmo reached the gate of his lordship’s policy, he found it closed, and although he rang the bell, and called lustily to the gate-keeper, no one appeared. He put a hand on the top of the gate, and lightly vaulted over it. But just as he lighted, who should come round a bend in the drive a few yards off, but Lord Lick-my-loof himself, out for his morning walk! His irritable cantankerous nature would have been annoyed at sight of anyone treating his gate with such disrespect, but when he saw who it was that thus made nothing of it—clearing it with as much contempt as a lawyer would a quibble not his own—his displeasure grew to indignation and anger.
“I beg your pardon, my lord,” said Cosmo, taking the first word that apology might be immediate, “I could make no one hear me, and therefore took the liberty of describing a parabola over your gate.”
“A verra ill fashiont parabola in my judgment, Mr. Warlock! I fear you have been learning of late to think too little of the rights of property.”
“If I had put my foot on your new paint, my lord, I should have been to blame; but I vaulted clean over, and touched nothing more than if the gate had been opened to me.”
“I’ll have an iron gate!”
“Not on my account, my lord, I hope; for I have come to ask you to put it out of my power to offend any more, by enabling me to leave Glenwarlock.”
“Well?” returned his lordship, and waited.
“I find myself compelled at last,” said Cosmo, not without some tremor in his voice, which he did his best to quench, “to give you the refusal, according to your request, of the remainder of my father’s property.”
“House and all?”
“Everything except the furniture.”