When last he saw Sir Louis, now nearly twelve months since, he was intent on making a proposal of marriage to Miss Thorne.  This intention he carried out about two days after Frank Gresham had done the same thing.  He had delayed doing so till he had succeeded in purchasing his friend Jenkins’s Arab pony, imagining that such a present could not but go far in weaning Mary’s heart from her other lover.  Poor Mary was put to the trouble of refusing both the baronet and the pony, and a very bad time she had of it while doing so.  Sir Louis was a man easily angered, and not very easily pacified, and Mary had to endure a good deal of annoyance; from any other person, indeed, she would have called it impertinence.  Sir Louis, however, had to bear his rejection as best he could, and, after a perseverance of three days, returned to London in disgust; and Mary had not seen him since.

Mr Greyson’s first letter was followed by a second; and the second was followed by the baronet in person.  He also required to be received en grand seigneur, perhaps more imperatively than Mr Mortimer Gazebee himself.  He came with four posters from the Barchester Station, and had himself rattled up to the doctor’s door in a way that took the breath away from all Greshamsbury.  Why! the squire himself for a many long year had been contented to come home with a pair of horses; and four were never seen in the place, except when the De Courcys came to Greshamsbury, or Lady Arabella, with all her daughters returned from her hard-fought metropolitan campaigns.

Sir Louis, however, came with four, and very arrogant looked, leaning back in the barouche belonging to the George and Dragon, and wrapped up in fur, although it was now midsummer.  And up in the dicky behind was a servant, more arrogant, if possible, than his master—­the baronet’s own man, who was the object of Dr Thorne’s special detestation and disgust.  He was a little fellow, chosen originally on account of his light weight on horseback; but if that may be considered a merit, it was the only one he had.  His out-door show dress was a little tight frock-coat, round which a polished strap was always buckled tightly, a stiff white choker, leather breeches, top-boots, and a hat, with a cockade, stuck on one side of his head.  His name was Jonah, which his master and his master’s friends shortened to Joe; none, however, but those who were very intimate with his master were allowed to do so with impunity.

This Joe was Dr Thorne’s special aversion.  In his anxiety to take every possible step to keep Sir Louis from poisoning himself, he had at first attempted to enlist the baronet’s ‘own man’ in the cause.  Joe had promised fairly, but had betrayed the doctor at once, and had become the worst instrument of his master’s dissipation.  When, therefore, his hat and the cockade were seen, as the carriage dashed up to the door, the doctor’s contentment was by no means increased.