Any compliment to Hurst's acuteness in the matter of horse-flesh was sure to have its effect, and he walked off with an air of some importance to discharge his commission.
"Now, then," said Horace eagerly, "we have got rid of him for ten minutes, which was all I wanted; if you please, Flora dear, we must have your cleverness to help us in a little difficulty."
"Indeed!" said Miss Leicester, colouring a little, as her cousin, in his eagerness, seized her hand in both of his—"what scrape have you got into now, Horace, and how can I possibly help you?"
"Oh, I want you to hit upon some plan for keeping that fellow Hurst here after we are gone."
"Upon my word!"
"Stay; you don't know what I mean. I'll tell you why—if he drives home to Oxford, he'll infallibly upset us; and drive he must if he goes home with us, because, in fact, the team is his, and I drove them all the way here, and it's his turn back, you see."
"Then why, in the multitude of absurdities which you Oxonians perpetrate—I beg your pardon, Mr Hawthorne—but why need you have come out in a tandem at all, with a man who can't drive?"
"Simply, Flora, because I had no other way of coming at all."
"It was very absurd in us, Miss Leicester, I allow," said I, "but you know what an attraction a steeple-chase is, to your cousin especially; and after having made up his mind to come—altogether, you see, it would have been a disappointment"—(to all parties, I had a mind to add, but I thought the balance was on my side without it.)
"After all," said Horace, "I shouldn't care a straw to run the chance, as far as I am concerned. I dare say the horses will go home straight enough, if he'll only let them: or if he wouldn't, I shouldn't mind knocking him off the box at once—by accident; but Frank here is rather particular, and I promised him I would not let Hurst drive. I thought once, if we had dined by ourselves, of persuading him he was drunk, and sending him home in a fly; but I am afraid, as matters stand, that plea is hardly practicable."