An indescribable bedlam of confusion followed, lords and gentlemen, tradesmen and grooms, hostlers and apprentices, all tumbling after, many crying with laughter.  My Lord Sandwich’s jockey pulled his Grace from the water in a most pitiable state of rage and humiliation.  His side curls gone, the powder and pomatum washed from his hair, bedraggled and muddy and sputtering oaths, he made his way to Lord March, swearing by all divine that a trick was put on him, that he would ride the stallion to Land’s End.  His Lordship, pulling his face straight, gravely informed the duke that the match was over.  With this his Grace fell flatly sullen, was pushed into a coach by Sir John and the captain, and drove rapidly off Kensington way, to avoid the people at the corner.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN WHICH I AM ROUNDLY BROUGHT TO TASK

I would have gone to Arlington Street direct, but my friends had no notion of letting me escape.  They carried me off to Brooks’s Club, where a bowl of punch was brewed directly, and my health was drunk to three times three.  Mr. Storer commanded a turtle dinner in my honour.  We were not many, fortunately,—­only Mr. Fox’s little coterie.  And it was none other than Mr. Fox who made the speech of the evening.  “May I be strung as high as Haman,” said he, amid a tempest of laughter, “if ever I saw half so edifying a sight as his Grace pitching into the Serpentine, unless it were his Grace dragged out again.  Mr. Carvel’s advent has been a Godsend to us narrow ignoramuses of this island, gentlemen.  To the Englishmen of our colonies, sirs, and that we may never underrate or misunderstand them more!”

“Nay, Charles,” cried my Lord Comyn.  “Where is our gallantry?  I give you first the Englishwomen of our colonies, and in particular the pride of Maryland, who has brought back to the old country all the graces of the new,—­Miss Manners.”

His voice was drowned by a deafening shout, and we charged our glasses to drain them brimming.  And then we all went to Drury Lane to see Mrs. Clive romp through ‘The Wonder’ in the spirit of the “immortal Peg.”  She spoke an epilogue that Mr. Walpole had writ especial for her, and made some witty and sarcastic remarks directed at the gentlemen in our stagebox.  We topped off a very full day by a supper at the Bedford Arms, where I must draw the certain.

The next morning I was abed at an hour which the sobriety of old age makes me blush abed think of.  Banks had just concluded a discreet discourse upon my accomplishment of the day before, and had left for my newspapers, when he came running back with the information that Miss Manners would see my honour that day.  There was no note.  Between us we made my toilet in a jiffy, and presently I was walking in at the Manners’s door in an amazing hurry, and scarcely waited for a direction.  But as I ran up the stairs, I heard the tinkle of the spinet, and the notes of an old, familiar tune fell upon my ears.  The words rose in my head with the cadence.