“Confound these corns!” he grumbled. “Ah, Barclay,” he cried to a thick-set man whom he met at that moment, “collecting your dues? It’s going to rain.”
“Yes, my lord. My corns shoot horribly.”
“So do mine; doosid bad. I’m going to get the carriage and have a drive. Can’t walk.”
He nodded and went back to his handsome house and grounds, contenting himself with sitting down in the lodge portico while the gardener’s wife ordered the carriage to be got ready.
“It isn’t handsome, but it suits me,” his lordship used to say, “and it’s comfortable. If I can’t have things as I like with my money, and at my time of life, why it’s doosid strange.”
So he waited till a groom brought the carriage down the drive, and then looked at it as it came.
“Don’t do to go wooing in,” he said, with a chuckle, as he got in and took the reins; and certainly it did not look like the chariot of love, for it was a little, low basket carriage, big enough to hold one, and shaped very much like a bath-chair. It was drawn by a very large, grey, well-clipped donkey with enormous ears, quite an aristocrat of his race, with his well-filled skin and carefully blackened harness.
“Thankye, John. Thankye, Mrs Roberts,” said his lordship, as he shook the reins. “Go on, Balaam.”
Balaam went deliberately on, and just as they were going out of the great iron gates, and his lordship was indulging in a pinch of snuff, there was the rattle of wheels to his right, and Cora Dean came along with her ponies at a smart trot, her mother looking like an over-blown peony by her side.
“Juno, by Jove!” said his lordship, preparing to raise his hat.