Mention has been omitted or forgotten by the worthy Dame, in her vagrant fowl’s treatment of a story she cannot incubate, will not relinquish, and may ultimately addle, that the bridegroom, after walking with a disengaged arm from the little village church at Croridge to his coach and four at the cross of the roads to Lekkatts and the lowland, abruptly, and as one pursuing a deferential line of conduct he had prescribed to himself, asked his bride, what seat she would prefer.
He shouted: ‘Ives!’
A person inside the coach appeared to be effectually roused.
The glass of the window dropped. The head of a man emerged. It was the head of one of the bargefaced men of the British Isles, broad, and battered flattish, with sentinel eyes.
In an instant the heavy-headed but not ill-looking fellow was nimble and jumped from the coach.
‘Napping, my lord,’ he said.
Heavy though the look of him might be, his feet were light; they flipped a bar of a hornpipe at a touch of the ground. Perhaps they were allowed to go with their instinct for the dance, that his master should have a sample of his wakefulness. He quenched a smirk and stood to take orders; clad in a flat blue cap, a brown overcoat, and knee-breeches, as the temporary bustle of his legs had revealed.
Fleet-wood heard the young lady say: ‘I would choose, if you please, to sit beside you.’
He gave a nod of enforced assent, glancing at the vacated box.
The man inquired: ‘A knee and a back for the lady to mount up, my lord?’