Evan consented.  I am afraid also it was the landlady’s flattering speech made him, without reckoning his means, add that the young mother and her child must be considered under his care, and their expenses charged to him.  The landlady was obliged to think him a wealthy as well as a noble youth, and admiringly curtsied.

Mr. John Raikes and Mr. Evan Harrington then strolled into the air, and through a long courtyard, with brewhouse and dairy on each side, and a pleasant smell of baking bread, and dogs winking in the sun, cats at the corners of doors, satisfied with life, and turkeys parading, and fowls, strutting cocks, that overset the dignity of Mr. Raikes by awakening his imitative propensities.  Certain white-capped women, who were washing in a tub, laughed, and one observed:  ’He’s for all the world like the little bantam cock stickin’ ‘self up in a crow against the Spaniar’.’  And this, and the landlady’s marked deference to Evan, induced Mr. Raikes contemptuously to glance at our national blindness to the true diamond, and worship of the mere plumes in which a person is dressed.

They passed a pretty flower-garden, and entering a smooth-shorn meadow, beheld the downs beautifully clear under sunlight and slowly-sailing images of cloud.  At the foot of the downs, on a plain of grass, stood a white booth topped by a flag, which signalled that on that spot Fallow field and Beckley were contending.

‘A singular old gentleman!  A very singular old gentleman, that!’ Raikes observed, following an idea that had been occupying him.  ’We did wrong to miss him.  We ought to have waylaid him in the morning.  Never miss a chance, Harrington.’

‘What chance?’ Evan inquired.

‘Those old gentlemen are very odd,’ Jack pursued, ’very strange.  He wouldn’t have judged me by my attire.  Admetus’ flocks I guard, yet am a God!  Dress is nothing to those old cocks.  He’s an eccentric.  I know it; I can see it.  He ’s a corrective of Cudford, who is abhorrent to my soul.  To give you an instance, now, of what those old boys will do—­I remember my father taking me, when I was quite a youngster, to a tavern he frequented, and we met one night just such an old fellow as this; and the waiter told us afterwards that he noticed me particularly.  He thought me a very remarkable boy—­predicted great things.  For some reason or other my father never took me there again.  I remember our having a Welsh rarebit there for supper, and when the waiter last night mentioned a rarebit, ’gad he started up before me.  I gave chase into my early youth.  However, my father never took me to meet the old fellow again.  I believe it lost me a fortune.’

Evan’s thoughts were leaping to the cricket-field, or he would have condoled with Mr. Raikes for a loss that evidently afflicted him still.