"Were you in Lord Ascot's stables?"
"No, sir. I am the son of Squire Ravenshoe's gamekeeper. The Ravenshoes and my Lord Ascot's family are connected by marriage. Ravenshoe is in the west country, sir. Lord Ascot knows me by repute, sir, and has a good opinion of me."
"It is perfectly satisfactory. Sloane, will you put him in the way of his duties? Make the other lads understand that he is master, will you? You may go."
CHAPTER XXXII.
SOME OF THE HUMOURS OF A LONDON MEWS.
So pursuing the course of our story, we have brought ourselves to the present extraordinary position. That Charles Ravenshoe, of Ravenshoe, in the county Devonshire, Esquire, and some time of St. Paul's College, Oxford, has hired himself out as groom to Lieutenant Hornby, of the 140th Hussars, and that also the above-named Charles Ravenshoe was not, and never had been Charles Ravenshoe at all, but somebody else all the time, to wit, Charles Horton, a gamekeeper's son, if indeed he was even this, having been christened under a false name.
The situation is so extraordinary and so sad, that having taken the tragical view of it in the previous chapter, we must of necessity begin to look on the brighter side of it now. And this is the better art, because it is exactly what Charles began to do himself. One blow succeeded the other so rapidly, the utter bouleversement of all that he cared about in the world. Father, friends, position, mistress, all lost in one day, had brought on a kind of light-hearted desperation, which had the effect of making him seek company, and talk boisterously and loud all day. It was not unnatural in so young and vigorous a man. But if he woke in the night, there was the cold claw grasping his heart. Well, I said we would have none of this at present, and we won't.
Patient old earth, intent only on doing her duty in her set courses, and unmindful of the mites which had been set to make love or war on her bosom, and the least of whom was worth her whole well-organised mass, had rolled on, and on, until by bringing that portion of her which contains the island of Britain, gradually in greater proximity to the sun, she had produced that state of things on that particular part of her which is known among mortals as spring. Now, I am very anxious to please all parties. Some people like a little circumlocution, and for them the above paragraph was written; others do not, and for them, I state that it was the latter end of May, and beg them not to read the above flight of fancy, but to consider it as never having been written.