“You are the most spirited laird that Outfieldhaugh ever saw, Mr Heatherton,” said Madame Græme. “It is a great pleasure to have a neighbour like you alongside of us.”
“An’ I’m as weel pleased wi’ the high-spirited Eyrymount,” said Nashon—“we’ll dash away nicely thegither.”
“Saw you ever such a fool, Miss Græme?” whispered Benjamin. “He will soon dash through Outfieldhaugh. If he had ploughed the salt seas, and endured the blisters of a tropical sun for his money, as I have done, he would know better how to guide it.”
Dione intuitively turned her face from the orange-coloured Indian towards the rose-coloured youth, and sighed.
“Are you to be present at the steeple-chase on the 19th?” said Eyrymount to Nashon.
“Surely,” replied he, readily, “I canna resist a steeple-chase. I ken nae sport like that mixture o’ rinnin, louping, manœuvring, jockeyin, tumblin, an’ brak-neck feats o’ horsemanship. It’s right glorious. If life had naething better to offer us, as a reward, for a’ we are doomed to suffer between the cradle and the grave, a guid steeple-chase wad be aneugh to mak us a’ wish to live our lives owre again. What are the rules?—will Springall be admitted?”
“No; he is beyond the age,” replied Græme, “but Hawthorn will sell ye Copperbottom.”
“Weel, I’ll ca’ the morn an’ see Copper,” said Nashon. “If I buy, I’ll ride him mysel—I’ll trust nae jockey. If I win I’ll gie the gentlemen o’ the Soho Club a chance for the prize again by anither steeple-chase, the day after the next county races, whereat, by-the-by, I wad like to hae a sweat for the gowd cup, as a guid way o’ bringin a person into notice, especially whar ane is his ain jockey, as I wad be, wearin a green silk jacket as livery. Hoo gran’ it wad be to hear the leddies cryin, ‘Success to the green!’—bettin their gowd pins on his comin up in guid time to the winnin post, and then shakin hands wi’ the victor, wi’ a thousand gratulations on his success!”
“Do my ears deceive me,” said Dione to herself, “as my eyes seemed to do when I saw the piebald character of his dress? How powerful is pride, when it is stimulated in the hidden recesses of the mind of the peasant, by the magic wand of fortune! Alas! alas! my choice is now between a foolish beggar and a heartless nabob.”
The effect produced by Nashon on the whole company assembled at Eyrymount was extraordinary. The master and mistress were delighted with him, and devoted him in their imaginations, to a speedy immolation on the altar of the god of folly; the members of the Soho Club already marked him out as a good pigeon, whose tail-feathers would enable them to fly yet a little longer in the high regions of fashion; Dione sighed for a lost lover and ruined simpleton; and Benjamin Rice counted, in his imagination, his guineas, and congratulated himself on a gout that prevented him from engaging in sports that might tend to dissipate them, along with the remnant of a ruined constitution, which sack, and sago pudding, and panado, could scarcely support.