"Egad, I quite forgot her. I'll warrant her flourishing from your face;—and your little boy—"
"No, no, little girl; it was rather a disappointment, but she is a darling child."
"Never mind, better luck next time; do you not think so, Wentworth? Come, let us sit down and hear about all my friends. Ha, Scott, I thought I knew you; and Trevors too,—keen after the hounds as ever, squire?"
"As ever, but this weather is bad for us, it's like snow, I fear."
"Like it; it is snowing like fury now. Egad it was balling in avalanches on my nag's hoofs."
"Oh, you rode then?" said the Earl.
"I didn't exactly walk, as my boots and spurs might have told you, but where I came from I won't say; the fox doesn't show where it earths, and I mustn't show my face by aught than lamplight."
"Then I fear your evil reports are true,—you have been making the Continent too hot for you."
"My evil reports,—if you mean by that my duels,—are certainly not few and far between; but it isn't my fault, if those rascally foreigners will quarrel so. Egad, they will find one Englishman a match for twenty of their cowardly selves. I'll whip them into order. But it is sheriff's officers that I fear here, and when I've had my grog, and seen the girls, I must put a dozen miles between us."
"I am sorry for that; but remember the Towers are safe, no sheriff's officer puts his head in here."