Sir Moses, however, who did not believe in any one refusing a gift, adhered pertinaciously to his promise,—“Oh, indeed, he should have him, he wouldn’t be easy if he didn’t take him,” and ringing the bell he desired the footman to tell Wetun to see if Mr. Pringle’s saddle would fit the Lord Mayor, and if it didn’t, to let our friend have one of his in the morning, and “here!” added he, as the man was retiring, “bring in tea.”—And Sir Moses being peremptory in his presents, Billy was compelled to remain under pressure of the horse.—So after a copious libation of tea the couple hugged and separated for the night, Sir Moses exclaiming “Breakfast at nine, mind!” as Billy sauntered up stairs, while the Baronet ran off to his study to calculate what Henerey Brown & Co. had done him out of.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
ROUGIER’S MYSTERIOUS LODGINGS—THE GIFT HORSE.
MR. Gallon’s liberality after the race with Mr. Flintoff was so great that Monsieur Rougier was quite overcome with his kindness and had to be put to bed at the last public-house they stopped at, viz.—the sign of the Nightingale on the Ashworth road. Independently of the brandy not being particularly good, Jack took so much of it that he slept the clock round, and it was past nine the next morning ere he awoke. It then took him good twenty minutes to make out where he was; he first of all thought he was at Boulogne, then in Paris, next at the Lord Warden Hotel at Dover, and lastly at the Coal-hole in the Strand.
Presently the recollection of the race began to dawn upon him—the red jacket—the grey horse, Cuddy in distress, and gradually he recalled the general outline of the performance, but he could not fill it up so as to make a connected whole, or to say where he was.
He then looked at his watch, and finding it was half-past four, he concluded it had stopped,—an opinion that was confirmed on holding it to his ear; so without more ado, he bounded out of bed in a way that nearly sent him through the gaping boards of the dry-rotting floor of the little attic in which they had laid him. He then made his way to the roof-raised window to see what was outside. A fine wet muddy road shone below him, along which a straw-cart was rolling; beyond the road was a pasture, then a turnip field; after which came a succession of green, brown, and drab fields, alternating and undulating away to the horizon, varied with here and there a belt or tuft of wood. Jack was no wiser than he was, but hearing sounds below, he made for the door, and opening the little flimsy barrier stood listening like a terrier with its ear at a rat-hole. These were female voices, and he thus addressed them—“I say, who’s there? Theodosia, my dear,” continued he, speaking down stairs, “vot’s de time o’ day, my sweet?”
The lady thus addressed as Theodosia was Mrs. Windybank, a very forbidding tiger-faced looking woman, desperately pitted with the small-pox, who was not in the best of humours in consequence of the cat having got to the cream-bowl; so all the answer she made to Jack’s polite enquiry was, “Most ten.”
“Most ten!” repeated Jack, “most ten! how the doose can that be?”
“It is hooiver,” replied she, adding, “you may look if you like.”