It is probable that the Cheap Jack would have made another effort to better his bargain, but his wife had come to seek him, and to her sharp eyes the Squire’s resolution was beyond mistake.
“We’ll take the five guineas, and thank you, sir,” she said, courtesying. The Squire did not care to dispute the five shillings which she had dexterously added, and he paid the sum, and the worthy couple went away.
“Miles!” said the Squire. The servant he had brought with him in reference to the donkey appeared, and touched his hat.
“Miss Amabel has persuaded me to buy this poor brute, that it may die in peace in the paddock. Can you get it home, d’ye think?”
“I think I can, sir, this evening; after a feed and some rest.”
The white horse had suddenly become a centre of interest in the inn-yard. Everybody, from the landlord to the stable-boy, felt its legs, and patted it, and suggested various lines of treatment.
Before he drove away, Mr. Ammaby overheard the landlord saying, “He be a sharp hand, is the Squire. I shouldn’t wonder if he brought the beast round yet.” Which, for his credit’s sake, the Squire devoutly hoped he might. But, after all, he had his reward when Amabel, sobbing with joy, flung her arms round him, and cried,—
“Oh, you dear, darling, _good_ daddy! How I love you and how the white horse loves you!”
MASTER SWIFT AT HOME.—RUFUS.—THE EX-PIG-MINDER.—JAN AND THE SCHOOLMASTER.
IT was a lovely autumn evening the same year, when the school having broken up for the day, Master Swift returned to his home for tea. He lived in a tiny cottage on the opposite side of the water-meadows to that on which Dame Datchett dwelt, and farther down towards the water-mill. He had neither wife nor child, but a red dog with a plaintive face, and the name of Rufus, kept his house when he was absent, and kept him company when he was at home.
Rufus was a mongrel. He was not a red setter, though his coloring was similar. A politely disposed person would have called him a retriever, and his curly back and general appearance might have carried this off, but for his tail, which, instead of being straight and rat-like, was as plumy as the Prince of Wales’s feathers, and curled unblushingly over his back, sideways, like a pug’s. “It was a good one to wag,” his master said, and, apart from the question of high breeding, it was handsome, and Rufus himself seemed proud of it.