Volume One—Chapter Five.
Charley’s encounters.
“Bai Jove, Vining! that you?” languidly exclaimed a little, thin, carefully-dressed man, ambling gently along on one of the most thoroughly-broken of ladies’ mares, whose pace was so easy that not a curl of her master’s jetty locks was disarranged, or a crease formed in his tightly-buttoned surtout. His figure said “stays” as plainly as figure could speak; he wore an eyeglass screwed into the brim of his very glossy hat; his eyes were half closed; his moustache was waxed and curled up at the ends like old-fashioned skates; and his carefully-trained whiskers lightly brushed their tips against his shoulders. And to set off such arrangements to the greatest advantage, he displayed a great deal of white wristband and shirt-front; his collar came down into the sharpest of peaks; and he rode in lemon-kid gloves and patent-leather boots.
“Hallo, Max!” exclaimed Charley, looking like some Colossus as he reined in by the side of the dandy, who was going in the same direction along a shady lane. “How are you? When did you come down?”
“So, so—so, so, mai dear fellow! Came down la-a-ast night. But pray hold in that confounded great beast of yours: she’s making the very deuce of a dust! I shall be covered!”
Charley patted and soothed his fiery curveting steed into a walk, which was quite sufficient to keep it abreast of Maximilian Bray’s ambling jennet, which kept up a dancing, circus-horse motion, one evidently approved by its owner for its aid in displaying his graceful horsemanship.
“Nice day,” said Charley, scanning with a side glance his companion’s “get-up,” and evidently with a laughing contempt.
“Ya-a-s, nice day,” drawled Bray, “but confoundedly dusty!”
“Rain soon,” said Charley maliciously. “Lay it well.”
“Bai Jove, no—surely not!” exclaimed the other, displaying a great deal of trepidation. “You don’t think so, do you?”