‘And now listen to your luck,’ said Evan; ‘I wish mine were like it!’ and Jack heard of Lady Jocelyn’s offer.  He heard also that the young lady he was to instruct was an heiress, and immediately inspected his garments, and showed the sacred necessity there was for him to refit in London, under the hands of scientific tailors.  Evan wrote him an introduction to Mr. Goren, counted out the contents of his purse (which Jack had reduced in his study of the pastoral game of skittles, he confessed), and calculated in a niggardly way, how far it would go to supply the fellow’s wants; sighing, as he did it, to think of Jack installed at Beckley Court, while Jack, comparing his luck with Evan’s, had discovered it to be dismally inferior.

‘Oh, confound those bellows you keep blowing!’ he exclaimed.  ’I wish to be decently polite, Harrington, but you annoy me.  Excuse me, pray, but the most unexampled case of a lucky beggar that ever was known—­and to hear him panting and ready to whimper!—­it’s outrageous.  You’ve only to put up your name, and there you are—­an independent gentleman!  By Jove! this isn’t such a dull world.  John Raikes! thou livest in times.  I feel warm in the sun of your prosperity, Harrington.  Now listen to me.  Propound thou no inquiries anywhere about the old fellow who gave the supper.  Humour his whim—­he won’t have it.  All Fallow field is paid to keep him secret; I know it for a fact.  I plied my rustic friends every night.  “Eat you yer victuals, and drink yer beer, and none o’ yer pryin’s and peerin’s among we!” That’s my rebuff from Farmer Broadmead.  And that old boy knows more than he will tell.  I saw his cunning old eye on-cock.  Be silent, Harrington.  Let discretion be the seal of thy luck.’

‘You can reckon on my silence,’ said Evan.  ’I believe in no such folly.  Men don’t do these things.’

‘Ha!’ went Mr. Raikes contemptuously.

Of the two he was the foolisher fellow; but quacks have cured incomprehensible maladies, and foolish fellows have an instinct for eccentric actions.

Telling Jack to finish the wine, Evan rose to go.

‘Did you order the horse to be fed?’

‘Did I order the feeding of the horse?’ said Jack, rising and yawning.  ‘No, I forgot him.  Who can think of horses now?’

‘Poor brute!’ muttered Evan, and went out to see to him.

The ostler had required no instructions to give the horse a feed of corn.  Evan mounted, and rode out of the yard to where Jack was standing, bare-headed, in his old posture against the pillar, of which the shade had rounded, and the evening sun shone full on him over a black cloud.  He now looked calmly gay.

’I ‘m laughing at the agricultural Broadmead!’ he said:  “‘None o’ yer pryin’s and peerin’s!” He thought my powers of amusing prodigious.  “Dang ’un, he do maak a chap laugh!” Well, Harrington, that sort of homage isn’t much, I admit.’