But as Harrington desired plain, prose, Mr. Raikes tamed his imagination to deliver it.  He pointed distinctly at the old gentleman who gave the supper as the writer of the letter.  Evan, in return, confided to him his history and present position, and Mr. Raikes, without cooling to his fortunate friend, became a trifle patronizing.

’You said your father—­I think I remember at old Cudford’s—­was a cavalry officer, a bold dragoon?’

‘I did,’ replied Evan.  ‘I told a lie.’

‘We knew it; but we feared your prowess, Harrington.’

Then they talked over the singular letter uninterruptedly, and Evan, weak among his perplexities of position and sentiment:  wanting money for the girl up-stairs, for this distasteful comrade’s bill at the Green Dragon, and for his own immediate requirements, and with the bee buzzing of Rose in his ears:  ‘She despises you,’ consented in a desperation ultimately to sign his name to it, and despatch Jack forthwith to Messrs. Grist.

‘You’ll find it’s an imposition,’ he said, beginning less to think it so, now that his name was put to the hated monstrous thing; which also now fell to pricking at curiosity.  For he was in the early steps of his career, and if his lady, holding to pride, despised him—­as, he was tortured into the hypocrisy of confessing, she justly might, why, then, unless he was the sport of a farceur, here seemed a gilding of the path of duty:  he could be serviceable to friends.  His claim on fair young Rose’s love had grown in the short while so prodigiously asinine that it was a minor matter to constitute himself an old eccentric’s puppet.

‘No more an imposition than it’s 50 of Virgil,’ quoth the rejected usher.

‘It smells of a plot,’ said Evan.

’It ‘s the best joke that will be made in my time,’ said Mr. Raikes, rubbing his hands.

‘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!