billiards.”
“For what, Hampton?” said his sister.
“Er-rum! – billiards,” said Sir Hampton.
“It is not often that I venture upon a word, Hampton, respecting your household management; but when I hear of propositions which must interfere with your fixture welfare, I feel bound to speak.”
“And, pray, what do you mean?” said Sir Hampton, angrily.
“I mean that I gave way when you insisted on having cards in the house, because you said your visitors liked whist – ”
“And you were always rattling the dice box and playing backgammon,” retorted Sir Hampton.
“That is different,” said Miss Matilda; “backgammon is a very old and a very innocent game.”
“Oh!” said Sir Hampton.
“I have known great divines play at backgammon.”
“And I’ve known a bishop play a good rubber at whist,” said Sir Hampton.
“I am sorry for it,” said Miss Matilda; “but I draw the line at billiards. It is a detestable game, played on a green cloth which is the flag of gambling, and – ”
“If you will take my advice, Matty, you will hold your tongue,” said Sir Hampton. “My guests will like a game at billiards, and I’ll be bound to say, before we’ve had the table in the house a month, you’ll be playing a game yourself.”
“Hampton!”
“Same as you do at whist.”
“I oblige your guests, and make up your horrid rubbers.”
“But I say, aunty, you do like winning, you know,” chimed in Fin.
“Oh, my dear, I – ”
“You pocketed fifteen shillings – I won’t say ‘bob,’ because it’s slangy,” said Fin, laughing mischievously.
“I protest, I – ”
“Er-rum! – I will not hear another word. We start for town to-morrow; and, my dears, you asked me once for horses – you shall have them. Fin, my child, don’t strangle me! There, now, see how you’ve rumpled my cravat!”
“Oh, thank you, daddy!”
“Now, if you say daddy again, I’ll alter my mind,” said the old gentleman, angrily.
“There, then, I won’t,” said Fin. “But I say, pa, we must have a groom.”
“Of course, my dear.”
“And riding-habits.”
“To be sure.”
“And we can get them in town. Oh, Tiny, do say ‘Hooray’ for once in your life.”
“Er-rum! It’s my intention,” said Sir Hampton, “to patronise the sports of our country, and foster hunting, game-keeping, and the like. By the way, that man Lloyd might do some commissions for me. Matty, you will keep house till we return. My dears, we start to-morrow morning.”
“Then all I’ve got to say,” said Miss Matilda, sharply, “is this – ”
“Yelp! yelp! yelp!” – a succession of wild shrieks from beneath the antimacassar, out of one side of which lay a thin black tail, in very close proximity to Fin’s pretty little foot, and in an instant Aunt Matty was down upon her knees, talking to and caressing the dog.
“Er-rum!” went Sir Hampton, slowly crossing the hall to his library, followed by Lady Rea; and directly after Miss Matilda hurried away, with her pet in her arms.
“Now, Fin, that was cruel. I saw you tread on Pip’s tail,” said Tiny.
“Doing evil that good might come,” said Fin, defiantly. “Look here, Tiny – pets were anciently offered up to save a row. If I hadn’t made him squeal, there would have been pa storming, Aunt Matty going into hysterics, and ma worried to death; so that it was like the old nursery rhyme – ”
“I trod sharp on the little dog’s tail;
The dog began to shriek and wail,
And poor Aunty Matty turned mighty pale:
It stopped papa from blowing a gale;
And that’s the end of my little tale.”
“Er-rum!” was heard from across the hall.
“There’s daddy going to lecture me; and look here, Tiny, Edward will come in directly to clear the cloth. Now, then, here’s a penny; let’s toss. Heads or tails, who wins.”
“Wins what?”
“Mr Richard Trevor, and Penreife. Now then, cry!”
“No,” said Tiny, “I’ll laugh instead.”
And she kissed her sister on the cheek.
In Pall Mall
“Voilà! – the pilot-fish and the shark!”
The words were spoken by an individual idly smoking a cigar on the steps of that gloomy-looking pile in Pall Mall known as the Peripatetics. He was the being that, go where he would, uneducated people would set down as belonging to the division Swell; for there was ton and aristocrat in the fit of his clothes and every curve of his body. Women would have called his black moustache and beard handsome, and spoken of his piercing eyes, high white forehead, and wonderful complexion; but Podger Pratt – that is to say, Frank Pratt – said more than once he had never seen a barber’s dummy that was his equal. He said it in a very solemn way; and when it came to the ears of the gentleman in question, he denounced Podger Pratt as a disgusting little cad, and the next time they met at the club Captain Vanleigh asked Pratt what he meant by it.
“What did I mean?” said Pratt, in a serious, puzzled tone of voice. “What did I mean? – oh, just what I said. It’s a fact.”
Captain Vanleigh stood glaring at him as if trying to pierce the imperturbable crust of solemnity on the speaker’s face; but Pratt remained as solemn as a judge, and amidst an ill-suppressed tittering, the Captain stalked from the room, saying to his companion —
“The fellow’s a fool – an ass – little better than an idiot!”
As for Podger Pratt, he looked innocently round the room as if asking the meaning of the laugh, and then went on with his paper.
But that was months before the present day, when Captain Vanleigh, gracefully removing his cigar from between his white teeth, said —
“Voilà! the pilot-fish and the shark!”
“The sucking-fish and the porpoise, I should say,” remarked his companion, a fair young fellow, dressed evidently upon the other’s model. “What big fellow Dick Trevor has grown!”
“You’re right, Flick; sucking-fish it is. That fat, little, briefless barrister will fatten still more
