CHAPTER IX.
A PUP AT WALK.—IMPERIAL JOHN.
N ext day his lordship, who was of the nice old Andlesey school of dressers, was to be seen in regular St. James’s Street attire, viz. a bright blue coat with gilt buttons, a light blue scarf, a buff vest with fawn-coloured leathers, and brass heel spurs, capering on a long-tailed silver dun, attended by a diminutive rosy-cheeked boy—known in the stables as Cupid-without-Wings—on a bay.
He was going to see a pup he had at walk at Freestone Banks, of which the reader will remember Dicky had spoken approvingly on a previous day; and the morning being fine and sunny, his lordship took the bridle-road over Ashley Downs, and along the range of undulating Heathmoor Hills, as well for the purpose of enjoying the breeze as of seeing what was passing in the vale below. So he tit-up’d and tit-up’d away, over the sound green sward, on his flowing-tailed steed, his keen far-seeing eye raking all the roads as he went. There seemed to be nothing stirring but heavy crushing waggons, with doctor’s gigs and country carts, and here and there a slow-moving steed of the grand order of agriculture.
When, however, he got to the broken stony ground where all the independent hill tracks join in common union to effect the descent into the vale, his hack pricked his ears, and looking a-head to the turn of the lane into which the tracks ultimately resolved themselves, his lordship first saw a fluttering, light-tipped feather, and then the whole figure of a horsewoman, emerge from the concealing hedge as it were on to the open space beyond. Miss, too, had been on the hills, as the Earl might have seen by her horse’s imprints, if he had not been too busy looking abroad; and she had just had time to effect the descent as he approached. She was now sauntering along as unconcernedly as if there was nought but herself and her horse in the world. His lordship started when he saw her, and a crimson flush suffused his healthy cheeks as he drew his reins, and felt his hack gently with his spur to induce him to use a little more expedition down the hill. Cupid-without-Wings put on also, to open the rickety gate at the bottom, and his lordship telling him, as he passed through, to “shut it gently,” pressed on at a well-in-hand trot, which he could ease down to a walk as he came near the object of his pursuit. Miss’s horse heard footsteps coming and looked round, but she pursued the even tenour of her way apparently indifferent to everything—even to a garotting. His lordship, however, was not to be daunted by any such coolness; so stealing quietly alongside of her, he raised his hat respectfully, and asked, in his mildest, blandest tone, if she had “seen a man with a hound in a string?”
“Hound! me! see!” exclaimed Miss de Glancey, with a well feigned start of astonishment. “No, sir, I have not,” continued she haughtily, as if recovering herself, and offended by the inquiry.
“I’m afraid my hounds startled your horse the other day,” observed his lordship, half inclined to think she didn’t know him.
“Oh, no, they didn’t,” replied she with an upward curl of her pretty lip; “my horse is not so easily startled as that; are you, Cock Robin?” asked she, leaning forward to pat him.
Cock Robin replied by laying back his ears, and taking a snatch at his lordship’s hack’s silver mane, which afforded him an opportunity of observing that Cock Robin was not very sociable.