Still there was a difficulty—Monsieur couldn’t drive. No, by his vord, he couldn’t drive. He was valet-de-chambre, not coachman or grum, and could make nothing of horses. Might know his ear from his tail, but dat was all. Should be sure to opset, and p’raps damage his crown. (Jack wanted to go in a carriage and pair.) Well, the Major would accommodate that too. Tom Cowlick, the hind’s lad at the farm, should act the part of charioteer, and drive Monsieur, bag, baggage and all. And so matters were ultimately settled, it never occurring to Billy to make the attempt on the Major’s stud that the Baronet proposed, in the shape of borrowing a second horse, our friend doubtless thinking he carried persecution enough in his own nag. The knotty point of transit being settled, Billy relapsed into his usual easy languor among the girls, while Monsieur made a judicious draft of clothes to take with them, leaving him a very smart suit to appear in at church on Sunday, and afterwards ride through the county in. We will now suppose the dread hour of departure arrived.
It was just as Mrs. Pringle predicted! There were the red eye-lids and laced kerchiefs, and all the paraphernalia of leave-taking, mingled with the hopes of Major and Mrs. Yammerton, that Billy would soon return (after the washing, of course); for, in the language of the turf, Billy was anybody’s game, and one sister had just as good a right to red eye-lids as another.
Having seen Billy through the ceremony of leave-taking, the Major then accompanied him to the stable, thinking to say a word for himself and his late horse ‘ere they parted. After admiring Napoleon the Great’s condition, as he stood turned round in the stall ready for mounting, the Major observed casually, “that he should not be surprised if Sir Moses found fault with that ‘oss.”
“Why?” asked Billy, who expected perfection for a hundred guineas.
“D-d-don’t know,” replied the Major, with a Jack Rogers’ shrug of the shoulders. “D-d-don’t know, ‘cept that Sir Moses seldom says a good word for anybody’s ‘oss but his own.”
The clothes being then swept over the horse’s long tail into the manger, he stepped gaily out, followed by our friend and his host.
“I thought it b-b-better to send your servant on,” observed the Major confidentially, as he stood eyeing the gay deceiver of a horse: “for, between ourselves, the Baronet’s stables are none of the best, and it will give you the opportunity of getting the pick of them.”
“Yarse,” replied Billy, who did not enter into the delicacies of condition.
“That ho-ho-horse requires w-w-warmth,” stuttered the Major, “and Sir Moses’s stables are both d-d-damp and d-d-dirty;” saying which, he tendered his ungloved hand, and with repeated hopes that Billy would soon return, and wishes for good sport, not forgetting compliments to the Baronet, our hero and his host at length parted for the present.
And the Major breathed more freely as he saw the cock-horse capering round the turn into the Helmington road.