a low-born acquaintance;—­had sought with sundry propitiations, intelligent glances, light shrugs, and such like, to divide Evan from Jack.  He did this, doubtless, because he partly sympathized with Evan, and to assure him that he took a separate view of him.  Probably Evan was already offended, or he held to Jack, as a comrade should, or else it was that Tailordom and the pride of his accepted humiliation bellowed in his ears, every fresh minute:  ‘Nothing assume!’ I incline to think that the more ale he drank the fiercer rebel he grew against conventional ideas of rank, and those class-barriers which we scorn so vehemently when we find ourselves kicking at them.  Whatsoever the reason that prompted him, he did not respond to Laxley’s advances; and Laxley, disregarding him, dealt with Raikes alone.

In a tone plainly directed at him, he said:  ’Well, Harry, tired of this?  The agriculturals are good fun, but I can’t stand much of the small cockney.  A blackguard who tries to make jokes out of the Scriptures ought to be kicked!’

Harry rejoined, with wet lips:  ’Wopping stuff, this ale!  Who’s that you want to kick?’

‘Somebody who objects to his bray, I suppose,’ Mr. Raikes struck in, across the table, negligently thrusting out his elbow to support his head.

‘Did you allude to me, sir?’ Laxley inquired.

‘I alluded to a donkey, sir.’  Raikes lifted his eyelids to the same level as Laxley’s:  ‘a passing remark on that interesting animal.’

His friend Harry now came into the ring to try a fall.

‘Are you an usher in a school?’ he asked, meaning by his looks what men of science in fisticuffs call business.

Mr. Raikes started in amazement.  He recovered as quickly.

’No, sir, not quite; but I have no doubt I should be able to instruct you upon a point or two.’

‘Good manners, for instance?’ remarked the third young cricketer, without disturbing his habitual smile.

‘Or what comes from not observing them,’ said Evan, unwilling to have Jack over-matched.

‘Perhaps you’ll give me a lesson now?’ Harry indicated a readiness to rise for either of them.

At this juncture the chairman interposed.

‘Harmony, my lads!—­harmony to-night.’

Farmer Broadmead, imagining it to be the signal for a song, returned: 

’All right, Mr.—–­ Mr. Chair! but we an’t got pipes in yet.  Pipes before harmony, you know, to-night.’

The pipes were summoned forthwith.  System appeared to regulate the proceedings of this particular night at the Green Dragon.  The pipes charged, and those of the guests who smoked, well fixed behind them, celestial Harmony was invoked through the slowly curling clouds.  In Britain the Goddess is coy.  She demands pressure to appear, and great gulps of ale.  Vastly does she swell the chests of her island children, but with the modesty of a maid at the commencement.