“Better bring two when I’m there, hadn’t I?” asked Cuddy.
“Well,” said Sir Moses, dryly, “I s’pose there’ll be no great harm if you do;” and away Cuddy went.
“D-e-e-a-vil of a fellow to drink—d-e-e-a-vil of a fellow to drink,” drawled Sir Moses, listening to his receding footsteps along the passage. He then directed his blarney to Billy. “Oh dear, he was sorry to hear he’d been ill; what could it be? Lost a nice gallop, too—dom’d if he hadn’t. Couldn’t be the pie! Wondered he wasn’t down in the morning.” Then Billy explained that his horse was ill, and that prevented him.
“Horse ill!” exclaimed Sir Moses, throwing out his hands, and raising his brows with astonishment—“horse ill! O dear, but that shouldn’t have stopped you, if I’d known—should have been most welcome to any of mine—dom’d if you shouldn’t! There’s Pegasus, or Atalanta, or Will-o’-the-Wisp, or any of them, fit to go. O dear, it was a sad mistake not sending word. Wonder what Wetun was about not to tell me—would row him for not doing so,” and as Sir Moses went on protesting and professing and proposing, Cuddy Flintoff’s footstep and “for-rard on! for-rard on!” were heard returning along the passage, and he presently entered with a bottle in each hand.
“There are a brace of beauties!” exclaimed he, placing them on the round table, with the dew of the cellar fresh on their sides—“there are a brace of blood-like beauties!” repeated he, eyeing their neat tapering necks, “the very race-horse of bottles—perfect pictures, I declare; so different to those great lumbering roundshouldered English things, that look like black beer or porter, or something of that sort.” Then Cuddy ran off for glasses and tumblers and water; and Sir Moses, having taken a thimble-full of brandy, retired to change his clothes, declaring he felt chilly; and Cuddy, reigning in his stead, made Billy two such uncommonly strong brews, that we are sorry to say he had to be put to bed shortly after.
And when Mr. Bankhead heard that Cuddy Flintoff had been sent to the cellar instead of him, he declared it was the greatest insult that had ever been offered to a gentleman of his “order,” and vowed that he would turn his master off the first thing in the morning.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
MR. PRINGLE SUDDENLY BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE H. H. H.
NEXT day being a “dies non” in the hunting way, Sir Moses Mainchance lay at earth to receive his steward, Mr. Mordecai Nathan, and hear what sport he had had as well in hunting up arrears of rent as in the management of the Pangburn Park estate generally. Very sorry the accounts were, many of the apparent dullard farmers being far more than a match for the sharp London Jew. Mr. Mordecai Nathan indeed, declared that it would require a detective policeman to watch each farm, so tricky and subtile were the occupants. And as Sir Moses listened to the sad recitals, how Henery Brown & Co. had been leading off their straw by night, and Mrs. Turnbull selling her hay by day, and Jacky Hindmarch sowing his fallows without ever taking out a single weed, he vowed that they were a set of the biggest rogues under the sun, and deserved to be hung all in a row,—dom’d if they didn’t! And he moved and seconded and carried a resolution in his own mind, that the man who meddled with land as a source of revenue was a very great goose. So, charging Mr. Mordecai Nathan to stick to them for the money, promising him one per cent. more (making him eleven) on what he recovered, he at length dissolved the meeting, most heartily wishing he had Pangburn Park in his pocket again. Meanwhile Messrs. Flintoff and Pringle had yawned away the morning in the usual dreamy loungy style of guests in country-houses, where the meals are the chief incidents of the day. Mr. Pringle not choosing to be tempted with any more “pie,” had slipped away to the stable as soon as Cuddy produced the dread cigar-case after breakfast, and there had a conference with Mr. Wetun, the stud-groom, about his horse Napoleon the Great. The drunkard half laughed when Billy asked “if he thought the horse would be fit to come out in the morning, observing that he thought it would be a good many mornins fust, adding that Mr. Fleams the farrier had bled him, but he didn’t seem any better, and that he was coming back at two o’clock, when p’raps Mr. Pringle had better see him himself.” Whereupon our friend Billy, recollecting Sir Moses’s earnest deprecation of his having stayed at home for want of a horse the day before, and the liberal way he had talked of Atalanta and Pegasus, and he didn’t know what else, now charged Mr. Wetun not to mention his being without a horse, lest Sir Moses might think it necessary to mount him; which promise being duly accorded, Billy, still shirking Cuddy, sought the retirement of his chamber, where he indited an epistle to his anxious Mamma, telling her all, how he had left Major Yammerton’s and the dangerous eyes, and had taken up his quarters with Sir Moses Mainchance, a great fox-hunting Hit-im and Hold-im shire Baronet at Pangburn Park, expecting she would be very much pleased and struck with the increased consequence. Instead of which, however, though Mrs. Pringle felt that he had perhaps hit upon the lesser evil, she wrote him a very loving letter by return of post, saying she was glad to hear he was enjoying himself, but cautioning him against “Moses Mainchance” (omitting the Sir), adding that every man’s character was ticketed in London, and the letters “D. D.” for “Dirty Dog” were appended to his. She also told him that uncle Jerry had been inquiring about him, and begging she would call upon him at an early day on matters of business, all of which will hereafter “more full and at large appear,” as the lawyers say; meanwhile, we must back the train of ideas a little to our hero. Just as he was affixing the great seal of state to the letter, Cuddy Flintoff’s “for-rard on! for-rard on!” was heard progressing along the passage, followed by a noisy knock, with an exclamation of “Pringle” at our friend’s door.