‘Yes; I am here still,’ he answered Evan’s greeting, with a flaccid gesture.  ‘Don’t excite me too much.  A little at a time.  I can’t bear it!’

‘How now?  What is it now, Jack?’ said Evan.

Mr. Raikes pointed at the dog.  ’I’ve made a bet with myself he won’t wag his tail within the next ten minutes.  I beg of you, Harrington, to remain silent for both our sakes.’

Evan was induced to look at the dog, and the dog looked at him, and gently moved his tail.

’I ‘ve lost!’ cried Raikes, in languid anguish.  ’He ’s getting excited.  He’ll go mad.  We’re not accustomed to this in Fallow field.’

Evan dismounted, and was going to tell him the news he had for him, when his attention was distracted by the sight of Rose’s maid, Polly Wheedle, splendidly bonneted, who slipped past them into the inn, after repulsing Jack’s careless attempt to caress her chin; which caused him to tell Evan that he could not get on without the society of intellectual women.

Evan called a boy to hold the horse.

‘Have you seen her before, Jack?’

Jack replied:  ’Once.  Your pensioner up-stairs she comes to visit.  I do suspect there kinship is betwixt them.  Ay! one might swear them sisters.  She’s a relief to the monotony of the petrified street—­the old man with the brown-gaitered legs and the doubled-up old woman with the crutch.  I heard the London horn this morning.’

Evan thrust the letter in his hands, telling him to read and form an opinion on it, and went in the track of Miss Wheedle.

Mr. Raikes resumed his station against the pillar, and held the letter out on a level with his thigh.  Acting (as it was his nature to do off the stage), he had not exaggerated his profound melancholy.  Of a light soil and with a tropical temperament, he had exhausted all lively recollection of his brilliant career, and, in the short time since Evan had parted with him, sunk abjectly down into the belief that he was fixed in Fallow field for life.  His spirit pitied for agitation and events.  The horn of the London coach had sounded distant metropolitan glories in the ears of the exile in rustic parts.

Sighing heavily, Raikes opened the letter, in simple obedience to the wishes of his friend; for he would have preferred to stand contemplating his own state of hopeless stagnation.  The sceptical expression he put on when he had read the letter through must not deceive us.  John Raikes had dreamed of a beneficent eccentric old gentleman for many years:  one against whom, haply, he had bumped in a crowded thoroughfare, and had with cordial politeness begged pardon of; had then picked up his walking-stick; restored it, venturing a witty remark; retired, accidentally dropping his card-case; subsequently, to his astonishment and gratification, receiving a pregnant missive from that old gentleman’s lawyer.  Or it so happened that Mr. Raikes met the old gentleman at a tavern,