“O Bob!”
CHAPTER XLIII
IN WHICH SIR JOHN DEVOTES HIMSELF TO THE MUSE
Dering of Dering being home again and his fame on every lip, it befell, to Sir John’s dismay, that the ‘Market Cross Inn’ was generally a-throng with visitors: sporting farmers who trotted up on their “bits o’ blood,” country gentry, bucks of the quality, and not a few ladies of fashion, all hither come to pay homage in their several ways to “the Wicked Dering.”
To avoid whom, Sir John promptly shut himself above stairs attended by the Corporal, admitting none but Mr. Bunkle, adventuring abroad only after dark. His injured arm still irked him, but this he accounted nothing compared with the hurt he had suffered at my lady’s hands.
In this situation he devoted the daylight hours to the Muse, and penned many and divers satyric pieces concerning men and manners in general and Woman in particular, with a view to publication in The Satyric Spy, or Polite Monitor; while his lampoon on the Sex entitled, “The Jade Equine and Feminine; or, The Horse the Nobler Animal,” progressed apace.
It was then upon a sunny afternoon that he laid down his pen to stare at floor and ceiling and walls, and finally at Corporal Robert busied with books of accounts at a small table in adjacent corner.
“Bob,” said he, with a yearning glance towards the open casement, “a guinea—five guineas for a suitable rhyme to Herminia!” Hereupon the Corporal glanced up, scratched his wig, rolled his eyes, and presently hazarded:
“‘Within ye,’ your honour?”