'That's true, my boy,' returned Master Southall, sending, in the plenitude of his satisfaction, a jet of smoke towards us with astonishing force. 'And, I say, Jem, I'll tell ee what I'll do; I'll clap on ten guineas more upon what I offered for the brown mare.'
'Done! She's yours, Tom, then, for ninety guineas!'
'Gie's your hand upon it!' cried Tom Southall, jumping up from his chair, and stretching a fist as big as a leg of mutton—well, say lamb—over the table. 'And here—here,' he added, with an exultant chuckle, as he extricated a swollen canvas-bag from his pocket—'here's the dibs at once.'
This transaction excited a great deal of surprise at our part of the table; and Dutton was rigorously cross-questioned as to his reason for parting with his favourite hunting mare.
'The truth is, friends,' said Dutton at last, 'I mean to give up farming, and'——
'Gie up farmin'!' broke in half-a-dozen voices. 'Lord!'
'Yes; I don't like it. I shall buy a commission in the army. There'll be a chance against Boney, now; and it's a life I'm fit for.'
The farmers looked completely agape at this announcement; but making nothing of it, after silently staring at Dutton and each other, with their pipes in their hands and not in their mouths, till they had gone out, stretched their heads simultaneously across the table towards the candles, relit their pipes, and smoked on as before.
'Then, perhaps, Mr Dutton,' said a young man in a smartly-cut velveteen coat with mother-of-pearl buttons, who had hastily left his seat further down the table—'perhaps you will sell the double Manton, and Fanny and Slut?'
'Yes; at a price.'