CHAPTER LXXXII

THE RIDE HOME

THE reader will now understand how it was that Mr. Bunting felt he had made greater progress with Miss Rosa than he had done upon any recent occasion. The bonnet had stood his best friend, though the Jug had certainly contributed to his success. While our hero was plying his softest soft nonsense into Miss Rosa’s ear, the Jug was sherrying and enunciating some very comfortable domestic platitudes into “Mamma’s,” whom he inwardly settled was a very sensible, agreeable woman. He would be (sip) bound to say (sop) that (sip) lady would make a steady respectable man very (sop) comfortable—what nice sherry it was (gulph)—dare say’d she would have some port to correspond. The house too was very nice, barring the down step into the drawing-room. Where two could dine, three could dine (sip)—certainly capital sherry; and so the Jug with more gumption than he seemed to possess, proceeded to glance at the question of amalgamation,—Boyston Park, Appleton Hall horses, boot jack, picture and all. He didn’t see why it shouldn’t do. This double intercourse going on, it was not to the interest of either party to move an adjournment, and if the day had not done it for them, there is no saying how long they might have sat. Even the Jug’s “scoffla” might have been forgotton. At length, premature evening came to the rescue, and hinted that they ought to be going home.

However parties may watch one another, and think they read their feelings by their eyes, there is one proceeding that completely baffles them, namely, the amount of fervour put into the squeeze of the hand at parting. Without going into particulars, we may say that both our friends mounted their horses, each perfectly satisfied with the result of the visit. The Jug was even gay, and tried to strike up a tune as he jogged Billy Rough’un down the carriage drive on to the road.

“Nice ladies,” said he, stooping to unlatch the gate, and swinging it open for our friend to follow.

“Very,” replied Mr. Bunting with an emphasis.

“No idea that you knew them,” observed the Jug, reining up alongside our friend. “No idea that you knew them. Have you ever been in this country before?”

“No,” replied our friend; “I met them in the summer at Roseberry Rocks.”

“Ah, I heard they were away somewhere,” observed the Jug, adding, “I didn’t know where it was.”

“It was there,” rejoined Mr. Bunting; and having given his companion this piece of information, he thought to have a little out of him in return. “Tell me,” said he, jerking his head back at it as he spoke, “is that place their own?”

“No; rented,” replied the Jug, seeing the point.

“Hem!” mused Mr. Bunting, doubting whether it was safe to go further with his inquiries. The Jug might tell Mamma, and that would not do.

The Jug then lighted a large Manilla cigar, and proceeded to fumigate his face, until he arrived at the first of a series of gaps by which he sought to lessen the distance to Appleton Hall, by a diagonal cut across country. Farmer Grufton, however, had anticipated the movement by making up the introductory gap in a more summary way than is usual in the middle of a hunting season.

“Rot the fellow?” exclaimed the Jug, halting before it, and looking at the stout perpendicular post with its strong interlacings of black thorn and white.

“Rot the fellow! he deserves to have a fresh hole bored in every rood of his fence,” repeated the Jug, putting Billy Rough’un close up to the place, and trying to pull the post out with his hand as he sat. It was too firmly driven in for that.

“I’ll have it out,” said he, dismounting and handing his horse to our hero.

The Jug then ascended the little mud bank, and after a series of struggles and wrestles, succeeded in drawing the post from its place. “Nasty unhandsome behaviour,” said he, knocking the other impediments out of the way as he spoke. “Nasty unhandsome behaviour; I nearly broke my neck in making this gap, and now he seeks to deprive me of the fruits of my labour.”

The road being now clear, the Jug resumed Billy Rough’un, and leading him over the gap, remounted with the post over his shoulder.

“What are you going to do with it?” now asked our hero.

“I’ll put it where they won’t get it again,” replied the Jug, rousing Billy Rough’un into a canter with a touch of the spur, and threading a variety of fences with a knowledge of outlets that was perfectly astonishing. Whenever Mr. Bunting thought they were irrecoverably pounded, the Jug solved the mystery with a swerve or a turn to some heretofore invisible opening. So they proceeded from fallow to pasture, from pasture to seeds, from seeds among turnips, in a sort of hands-across-and-back-again, down-the-middle-and-up-again dance of agricultural variety.

At length they approached a few cottages. in the little garden attached to one of which was a red-cloaked old woman gathering kindling wood from the fence.

“There, old girl!” cried the Jug, chucking the post over the hedge to her as he spoke—“There! there’s something to make the pot boil.”

“Thank you, sir,” cried the woman, hurrying to take it up, thinking what a fine fire it would make for the evening. “Thank you, sir,” repeated she as she clutched it.

“Shan’t be troubled with that again,” observed the Jug, now swinging back a very ricketty gate leading on to a very rutty road.

They kept its course for some half mile, when squeezing through a ragged belt of fir plantation, and availing themselves of a fallen place in the haw haw, the Jug “whoayed” Billy Rough’un as he got upon grass, and looking back, asked our hero if he knew where he was.

“Not the slightest idea.” replied Mr. Bunting, looking around.

“Home,” said the Jug, pointing to the stable lights twinkling in front.

“Who’d have thought it!” rejoined Mr. Bunting.

“Nothing like knowing a country,” observed the Jug.

“Nothing,” assented Mr. Bunting, adding, “I shouldn’t have thought we were half way there yet.”

“Nor should we,” replied the Jug, “if I hadn’t pulled out that post;” adding, “It’s not fair after a man has been at the trouble of studying a country, and establishing his gaps, to stop him in that sort of way.”

As our friends advanced over the green sward, the trod of horses’ feet became more frequent, until the grass was altogether obliterated with the repetition of their hoofs as the line of march led up to the stables.

Entering the yard, the Jug gave one of his familiar holloas, which brought out as well Billy Button as the man who had the charge of Little Merrylegs.

Having taken the hare from the saddle, and given his orders for the morrow, the Jug led the way into the house by the same way as he had introduced Mr. Bunting on his first arrival.

“Anybody dine here?” asked he, as he met a footman in the passage leading into his bedroom.

“Yez-ir, Mr. Gurney Busbey does.”

“Oh, does he?” replied the Jug; “then we shall want an anchovy toast,” which meant a second bottle of port, Gurney Busbey being one of the gentlemen against whom it was the Jug’s office especially to provide, and very ready he was so to do. So Busbey and Boyston had their bottle a-piece of Hutton’s thirty-four port, while Mr. Jessop and our hero sipped their quiet bottle of Latour, and all arose apparently equally sober. And the Jug having at length seen his companion buttoned into his booby hutch, retired to his bedroom to rock in his chair, con over the events of the day; and about three o’clock in the morning, he returned a mental verdict to himself, that he “might do a great deal worse than”—the reader knows what. So saying, he off with his nankins and turned into bed.