HASTINGS. My honest ’squire! I now find you a man of your word. This looks like friendship.
TONY. Ay, I’m your friend, and the best friend you have in the world, if you knew but all. This riding by night, by the bye, is cursedly tiresome. It has shook me worse than the basket of a stage-coach.
HASTINGS. But how? where did you leave your fellow-travellers? Are they in safety? Are they housed?
TONY. Five and twenty miles in two hours and a half is no such bad driving. The poor beasts have smoked for it: rabbit me, but I’d rather ride forty miles after a fox than ten with such varment.
HASTINGS. Well, but where have you left the ladies? I die with impatience.
TONY. Left them! Why where should I leave them but where I found them?
HASTINGS. This is a riddle.
TONY. Riddle me this then. What’s that goes round the house, and round the house, and never touches the house?
HASTINGS. I’m still astray.
TONY. Why, that’s it, mon. I have led them astray. By jingo, there’s not a pond or a slough within five miles of the place but they can tell the taste of.