CHAPTER XLII

THE GREAT MR. PRETTYFAT

Mr. Jorrocks’s introduction to the “old customer” originated in a very bumptious, wide-margined letter from the great Mr. Prettyfat, deputy surveyor of the wretched forest of Pinch-me-near. Luckily it was a royal forest, for it would have ruined anyone else. It had long been “administered” by Mr. Prettyfat, formerly butler to the great Lord Foliage, when that nobleman was at the head of the Woods and Forests; and twenty years had not diminished the stock of ignorance with which Prettyfat entered upon the duties of his office. He had, however, forgotten all about “napkins,” and was now a most important stately stomached personage, with royal buttons on a bright blue coat. It was always “her Majesty and I,” or I will consult with her Majesty’s Ministers,” or “my Lord’s Commissioners of her Majesty’s Treasury and I think there should be a new hinge to the low gate,” or “the Secretary of the Treasury and I differ about cutting down the shaken oaks on the North-east Dean, as I think they will recover.” Indeed, he would sometimes darkly hint that her Majesty was likely to pay him a visit to inspect his Cochin China and Dorking fowls, for which he was justly famous.

Now the foxes, with their usual want of manners, had presumed upon the royal forest poultry, and though Prettyfat had succeeded in trapping a good many of them, there was one audacious old varmint that seemed proof, as well against steel, as against the more deadly contents of his blunderbuss barrels. Prettyfat could neither catch him nor hit him. The oftener he blazed at him, the more impudent the fox seemed to become, and the greater pleasure he seemed to take in destruction, generally killing half-a-dozen more fowls than he carried away. Prettyfat then tried poison, but only succeeded in killing his own cat. At length he was fairly at his wits’ end. In this dilemma, it occurred to him that Jorrocks was the proper person to apply to, and hearing that he was a grocer in the City, who took a subscription to his hounds in the country, he concluded Jorrocks was a better sort of rat-catcher, who they might employ by the day, month, or year, so with the usual contempt of low people for those who make money, he concocted the following foolscapped sheet of impertinence, which he directed “On her Majesty’s Service,” and sealed with royal butter-pat sized arms:—

“Pinch-me-near Forest House.

“Sir,

“I am directed by the Right Honourable the Commissioner in charge of her Majesty’s Woods and Forests to desire that you will inform me, for the information of the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty’s Treasury, what will you undertake to exterminate the foxes in the Royal Forest of Pinch-me-near for? Their ravages have been very detrimental to the growth of naval timber, for which purpose alone these royal properties are retained.

“You will, therefore, please to inform me,—

“1st. What you will undertake to keep the foxes down for by the year;

“2ndly. What you will undertake to catch them at per head.

So that the Right Honourable the Commissioner in charge of her Majesty’s Woods and Forests may be enabled to give the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty’s Treasury their choice as to the mode of proceeding.

To which Mr. Jorrocks, after a little inquiry, replied as follows:—

“Diana Lodge, Handley Cross.

“Dear Prettyfat,

“Yours to hand, and note the contents. I shall be most ’appy to do my possible in the way of punishin’ the foxes without any bother with your peerage swells, who would only waste the season, and a great deal of good letter paper in needless correspondence. Life’s too short to enter into a correspondence with a great official; but as they tells me it is a most frightful beggarly sort o’ country, to which none of the water-drinkers here would go, I must just dust the foxes’ jackets with a short pack on bye days, which will enable me to begin as soon as ever you like in a mornin’, which, arter all is said and done, is the real time for makin’ them cry ‘Capevi!’ I does it all for the love o’ the thing, but if there are any earths, I shall be obliged by your stoppin’ them. Don’t stop ’em in, mind, or I’ll have to inform the Right Honourable the Commissioner in charge of her Majesty’s Woods and Forests, for the information of the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty’s Treasury. So no more at present from

And there we will leave Mr. Prettyfat for the present, in order to introduce another gentleman.