Leave we now, with story pending, Biddy and Eoa, Pearl, and even Amy; thee, too, rare Bull, and thee, O Rufus, overcast with anger. It is time to track the steps of him whom Fortune, blithe at her cruel trade, shall track as far as Gades, Cantaber, and wild Syrtes, where the Moorish billow is for ever heaving. Will he exclaim with the poet, who certainly was a jolly mortal,—“I praise her while she is my guest. If she flap her nimble wings, I renounce her charities; and wrap me in my manhood robe, and woo the upright poverty, the bride without a dower.” “A very fine sentiment, Master Horace; but were you not a little too fond even of Sabine and Lesbian—when the Massic juice was beyond your credit—to do anything more than feel it?”
As Cradock Nowell trudged that night towards the Brockenhurst Station, before he got very far from Amy, and while her tears were still on his cheek, he felt a little timid lick, a weak offering of sympathy.
Hereby black Wena made known to him that she was melted by his misfortunes, and saw that the right and most feeling course, and the one most pleasing to her dead master, was the transfer of her allegiance, and the swearing of fealty to the brother. To which conclusion the tender mode in which she was being carried conduced, perhaps, considerably; for she was wrapped in Claytonʼs woolly jacket, enthroned on Cradockʼs broad right arm, and with only her black nose exposed to the moon. So she jogged along very comfortably, until she had made up her mind, and given Cradock the kiss of seisin.
“Dear little thing,” he cried, for he looked on her now as Amyʼs keepsake, “you shall go with me wherever I go. You are faithful enough to starve with me; but you shall not starve until after me.”
Then he put her down, for he thought that a little run would do her good, and, in spite of all her misery, Amy had kept her pretty plump, plumper than she herself was; and it became no joke to carry her, with a travelling–bag, &c., after the first half mile.
Then Wena capered about, and barked, and came and licked his shoe, and offered to carry the coat for him. As he would not let her do this, she occupied her mind with the rabbits, which were out upon the feed largely, and were the last she would see for a long while, except the fat Ostenders.
When he got to London, and took small lodgings at a Mrs. Ducksacreʼs, “greengrocer and general fruiterer, Mortimer–street, Cavendish–square,”—I quote from the ladyʼs bags: confound it, there! I am always saying improper things; honi soit—I mean, of course, her paper bags—it was not long before he made two important discoveries, valuable rather than gratifying.
The first of these discoveries was, that our university portals are a mere side–postern, and not the great janua mundi. He found his classical scholarship, his early fame at Oxford, his love of elegant literature, rather a disadvantage than a recommendation for business.
“Prigs, sir, prigs,” said a member of an eminent City firm; “of course, I donʼt mean to be personal; but I have always found you Oxford men prigs, quite unfit for desk–work. You fancy you know so much; you are always discovering mareʼs–nests, and you wonʼt bear to be spoken to, even if you stick to your work; which, I assure you, is quite the exception. Then you hold yourself aloof, with your stupid etiquette, from the other young men, who are quite as good as you are. I assure you, the place was too hot to hold us with the last Oxford man we took in the counting–house; he gave himself such airs, the donkey! I vowed never to do it again: and I never will, sir. Good morning, sir; Gregson, show this gentleman the way out.”
Gregson did so with a grin, for Cradockʼs face proved that the principal had not been altogether wrong.