“Do not come with me to the door! I know you do not like to leave your horses!” she said, in a hurried tone. “Goodbye! I shall see you at the ball.”
He waited until he had seen her admitted into the house, and then got into the curricle again, and drove off. Ulysses nudged his nose under his arm. “Thank you,” he said dryly. “Do you think I am unreasonable to wish that she would trust me enough to tell me the truth?”
Ulysses sighed heavily; he was rather sleepy after his day in the country.
“I suppose I shall end by telling her that I have known it all along. And yet—Yes, Ulysses, I am quite unreasonable. Did it seem to you that she was not as indifferent to me as she would have had me believe?”
Understanding that something was expected of him, his admirer uttered a sound between a yelp and a bark, and furiously wagged his tail.
“You feel that I should persevere?” said Mr. Beaumaris. “I was, in fact, too precipitate. You may be right. But if she had cared at all, would she not have told me the truth?”
Ulysses sneezed.
“At all events,” remarked Mr. Beaumaris, “she was undoubtedly pleased with me for bringing you out with me.”
Whether it was due to this circumstance, or to Ulysses’ unshakeable conviction that he was born to be a carriage-dog, Mr. Beaumaris continued to take him about. Those of his intimates who saw Ulysses, once they had recovered from the initial shock, were of the opinion that the Nonpareil was practising some mysterious jest on society, and only one earnest imitator went so far as to adopt an animal of mixed parentage to ride in his own carriage. He thought that if the Nonpareil was setting a new fashion it would become so much the rage that it might be difficult hereafter to acquire a suitable mongrel. But Mr. Warkworth, a more profound thinker, censured this act as being rash and unconsidered. “Remember when the Nonpareil wore a dandelion in his buttonhole three days running?” he said darkly. “Remember the kick-up there was, with every saphead in town running round to all the flower-women for dandelions, which they hadn’t got, of course. Stands to reason you couldn’t buy dandelions! Why, poor Geoffrey drove all the way to Esther looking for one, and Altringham went to the trouble of rooting up half-a-dozen out of Richmond Park, and having a set-to with the keeper over it, and then planting ’em in his window-boxes. Good idea, if they had become the mode: clever fellow, Altringham!—but of course the Nonpareil was only hoaxing us! Once he had the whole lot of us decked out with them, he never wore one again, and a precious set of gudgeons we looked! Playing the same trick again, if you ask me!”
Only in one quarter did unhappy results arise from the elevation of Ulysses. The Honourable Frederick Byng, who had for years been known by the sobriquet of Poodle Byng from his habit of driving everywhere with a very highly-bred and exquisitely shaved poodle sitting up beside him, encountered Mr. Beaumaris in Piccadilly one afternoon, and no sooner clapped eyes on his disreputable companion than he pulled up his horses all standing, and spluttered out: “What the devil—!