He soon surrounded himself with the luxury that was so congenial to him. All the neighbourhood called on him, and his naturally sociable temper, amiable, domestic ways, and good position enabled him, with hardly any effort, to be always among a posse of people who suited him perfectly.
There were more ladies than young men in the neighbourhood. Valentine was intimate with half-a-dozen of the former before he had been among them three weeks. He experienced the delights of feminine flattery, a thing almost new to him. Who so likely to receive it? He was eligible, he was handsome, and he was always in a good humour, for the place and the life pleased him, and all things smiled.
In a round of country gaieties, in which picnics and archery parties bore a far larger proportion than any young man would have cared for who was less devoted to the other sex, Valentine passed much of his time, laughing and making laugh wherever he went. His jokes were bandied about from house to house, till he felt the drawback in passing for a wit. He was expected to be always funny.
But a little real fun goes a long way in a dull neighbourhood, and he had learned just so much caution from his early escapade as to be willing to hail any view concerning himself that might be a corrective of the more true and likely one that he loved to flirt.
He was quite determined, as he thought, not to get into another scrape, and perhaps a very decided intention to make, in the end, an advantageous marriage, may have grown out of the fancy that his romance in life was over.
If he thought so, it was in no very consistent fashion, for he was always the slave (for the day) of the prettiest girl in every party he went to.
It was on a Saturday that John Mortimer received his son's proposal for retrenchment; on the Wednesday succeeding it Valentine, sitting at breakfast at Melcombe, opened the following letter, and was amused by the old-fashioned formality of its opening sentence:—
"Wigfield, June 15th, 18—.
"My dear Nephew,—It is not often that I take up my pen to address you, for I know there is little need, as my niece Emily writes weekly. Frequently have I wondered what she could find to write for; indeed, it was not the way in my youth for people to waste so much time saying little or nothing—which is not my case at the present time, for your sister being gone on the Continent, it devolves upon me, that is not used to long statements, to let ye know, what ye will be very sorry to hear. I only hope it may be no worse before it is over.
"Matthew, the coachman, came running over to me on Monday morning last, and said would I come to the house, for the servants did not know what to be at, and told me that Johnnie, who had been to go back to Harrow by the eleven o'clock train, had got leave to drive the pheaton to the Junction with the four girls in it, and Bertram, who, by ill luck—of I may use such a word (meaning no irreverence)—of this dispensation of Providence, had not gone back to Mr. Tikey's that morning. So far as I can make out, he thought he should be late, and so he turned those two spirited young horses down that steep sandy lane by the wood, to cut off a corner; and whether the woodman's children ran out and frightened them, or whether he was shouting and whooping himself, poor laddie—for I heard something of both—but Barbara was just sobbing her heart away when she told it, and he aye raised the echoes wherever he went; but the horses set off, running away, tearing down that rough road. Johnnie shouted to them all to sit still, and so they did, though they were almost jolted out; and if they had been let alone, there might have been no accident; but two men sprung out of a hedge and tried to stop them, and they turned on to the common, and sped away like the wind towards home, till they came to the sand bank by the small inn, the Loving Cup, and there they upset the carriage, and when the two men got up to it Johnnie and all of them were tossed out, and the carriage was almost kicked to pieces by the horse that was not down.