As to Hardy, whom in the proper order we ought to have disposed of first, he was put on his horse by main force, and was led off by his wife, to whom he was muttering as far as I could hear him:
“Why, Nancy! How, did, you, get, in, such a fix? You’ll, fall, off, your, horse, sure, as you’re born, and I’ll have to put you up again.”
As they were constrained to go in a walk, they too must have got wringing wet, though they had a quarter of an hour the start of Toby.
VII.
BEN WILSON’S LAST JUG-RACE.
Coming up from Newport, on the pretty little steamer ‘Perry,’ a few days ago, I fell in with, or chanced to lay across the track of, a Mississippi flat-boatman whom I had not seen for three years, and from having had, once upon a time, a rather personal adventure with him, you may guess that the meeting was one of curious congratulation.
Ben and I had both travelled “some” since we had parted, and he had, as well as myself, many things to tell.
I was sitting on the upper deck, consulting the opinions of one of Job Patterson’s A No. 1 Havanas, when a pretty muscular and sun-burnt specimen of humanity hove alongside, and brought a rather big paw down upon my right shoulder with a bim that made me start a little.
“How are you old J comp’ny?” was the first broadside. “I ha’nt set eyes on you sence we had the scrimmidge down to the Washington ball-room, Orleans. Rayther a time that ar?” and he winked his little black eyes until I fancied I heard the lids snap.
“Ben Wilson?” I inquired.
“ ’Zactly; you’ve hit it on the head this time. How’ve you ben, and whar?”