“Morland remonstrated, pleaded the authority of road-books, inn-keepers and mile-stones; but his friend disregarded them all; he had a sure test of distance. ‘I know it must be five-and-twenty,’ said he, ‘by the time we have been doing it. It is now half after one; we drove out of the inn-yard at Tetbury as the town-clock struck eleven; and I defy any man in England to make my horse go less than ten miles an hour in harness; that makes it exactly twenty-five.’
“‘You have lost an hour,’ said Morland; ‘it was only ten o’clock when we came from Tetbury.’
“‘Ten o’clock! it was eleven, upon my soul! I counted every stroke. This brother of yours would persuade me out of my senses, Miss Morland; do but look at my horse, did you ever see an animal so made for speed in your life?’
“Catherine remarked the horse did look very hot.
“‘Hot! he had not turned a hair till we came to Walcot Church; but look at his forehead; look at his loins; only see how he moves; that horse cannot go less than ten miles an hour; tie his legs, and he will get on. What do you think of my gig, Miss Morland? A neat one, is it not? Well hung; town-built;’” and so on, ringing endless changes on John Thorpe’s possessions, their super-excellence, and his cleverness in securing them.
John Thorpe pronounces his criticism on the novels of the day, in a slashing, manly style, which still survives here and there. Poor Catherine, tired of his bets, and his short, sharp praise or condemnation of every woman’s face they pass, ventures to introduce the subject uppermost in her thoughts, “Have you ever read ‘Udolpho,’ Mr. Thorpe?”
“‘Udolpho!’ Oh! Lord! not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do.”
Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologise for her question; but he prevented her.
“Novels are all so full of stuff and nonsense,” he said, with more to the same purpose, winding up by the assertion of novels in general that “they are the stupidest things in creation.”
“I think you must like ‘Udolpho,’ if you were to read it,” Catherine pleads wistfully for her favourite, “it is so very interesting.”