Mr. Avenel turned red and white in a breath. He growled out something inaudible, turned on his heel, and strode off. The tinker watched him as he had watched Leonard, and then dogged the uncle as he had dogged the nephew. I don't presume to say that there was cause and effect in what happened that night, but it was what is called "a curious coincidence" that that night one of Richard Avenel's ricks was set on fire; and that that day he had called Mr. Sprott an incendiary. Mr. Sprott was a man of very high spirit and did not forgive an insult easily. His nature was inflammatory, and so was that of the lucifers which he always carried about him, with his tracts and glue-pots.
The next morning there was an inquiry made for the tinker, but he had disappeared from the neighborhood.
CHAPTER XVI.
It was a fortunate thing that the déjeûné dansant so absorbed Mr. Richard Avenel's thoughts, that even the conflagration of his rick could not scare away the graceful and poetic images connected with that pastoral festivity. He was even loose and careless in the questions he put to Leonard about the tinker; nor did he set justice in pursuit of that itinerant trader; for, to say truth, Richard Avenel was a man accustomed to make enemies among the lower orders; and though he suspected Mr. Sprott of destroying his rick, yet, when he once set about suspecting, he found he had quite as good cause to suspect fifty other persons. How on earth could a man puzzle himself about ricks and tinkers, when all his cares and energies were devoted to a déjeûné dansant? It was a maxim of Richard Avenel's, as it ought to be of every clever man, "to do one thing at a time;" and therefore he postponed all other considerations till the déjeûné dansant was fairly done with. Among these considerations was the letter which Leonard wished to write to the Parson. "Wait a bit, and we will both write!" said Richard good-humoredly, "the moment the déjeûné dansant is over!"
It must be owned that this fête was no ordinary provincial ceremonial. Richard Avenel was a man to do a thing well when he set about it,
"He soused the cabbage with a bounteous heart."
By little and little his first notions had expanded, till what had been meant to be only neat and elegant now embraced the costly and magnificent. Artificers accustomed to déjeûnés dansants came all the way from London to assist, to direct, to create. Hungarian singers, and Tyrolese singers, and Swiss peasant-women who were to chant the Ranz des Vaches, and milk cows, or make syllabubs, were engaged. The great marquee was decorated as a Gothic banquet hall; the breakfast itself was to consist of "all the delicacies of the season." In short, as Richard Avenel said to himself, "It is a thing once in a way; a thing on which I don't object to spend money, provided that the thing is—the thing!"
It had been a matter of grave meditation how to make the society worthy of the revel; for Richard Avenel was not contented with the mere aristocracy of the town—his ambition had grown with his expenses. "Since it will cost so much," said he, "I may as well come it strong, and get in the county."