‘Splendid life, beautiful weather, not too cold; shouldn’t mind it a bit; make heaps of money, I’m sure!’ said the Colonel incoherently. ‘But oh! Brian, old fellow, I never thought I should see you working for your living.’
‘Why not, my dear boy?’ said the philosopher of the spade coolly. ‘What does the old Roman poet say—furcae amor honestus est et liber—stick to your knife and fork, and all that. Horace has no doubt on the subject. This is my Sabine farm, and there is the Fons Bandusiae, for a time—glad to say—at any rate, for a time—the pre-remittance stage. It’s safer than billiards, and more creditable than whist—as a livelihood.’
‘True, by Jove!’ said the Colonel, ‘most honourable and all that. But the fellows at the Rag would never believe it, if I go back and tell them that I saw Brian de Bracy growing vegetables and living by it, by gad.’
‘Tell ’em every word of it, Billy, old boy,’ said the wholly unabashed and true descendant of Adam, squaring his shoulders and displaying his symmetrical figure. ‘Tell some of them to come out and try their luck here. It will do them a lot of good, make men of them, and keep them away from the bones.’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ assented the Colonel, hopelessly confused. ‘Most likely they’ll all come. Charming climate, splendid salad, and so on. Well, good-bye, old man. Sorry to see you looking so well. Oh lord! why didn’t the French Count kill you instead of your winging him, in that row about Ferraris, and stop this. Good gad!’
So saying, the warm-hearted warrior wrenched away his horse’s head and departed along the homeward track, inconsolable for at least a quarter of an hour, at the expiration of which time he unburdened his soul to the nearest niece as follows:—
‘Awful thing! poor Brian, wasn’t it? By gad, when I first recognised him, thought I should have fallen off my horse. Last time I saw him he was coming out of the Travellers’, in London, with a duke on one arm and the commander-in-chief on the other. Awful fuss always made about him. No swell within miles of him—at Ascot, Goodwood, and so on. Women reg’lar fought about him—handsomest man of his day. Shoot, ride, fence, everything, better than the best of the amateurs. And now, what’s he down to? By gad! it makes a baby of me.’ And the honest, kindly veteran looked as if a cambric handkerchief would have afforded him great comfort and relief under the circumstances.
‘Never mind, uncle,’ said the sympathising maiden, ‘you’ll see him at the ball to-morrow night, and I’ll dance with him—not that there’s much charity in that. You know how nicely he looks at night. There won’t be a man there to be compared with him.’
‘Of course I’ll go,’ said the Colonel, recovering himself as became a soldier, ‘and you may look me out a nice girl or two for a waltz. I don’t think I ever went to a ball at a diggings before.’