“Ay, and Mr. Foxwell himself will be here presently. A sight for sore eyes, eh? If I’d ’a’ known he was coming here, I’d ’a’ stopped at the Crown. No, damme if I would, neither! I won’t be kept from going where I choose by any man, least of all a man I don’t like. What’s Foxwell to me?”
“It’s small blame to you for not liking him, sir, if you’ll pardon my saying it, after the way he acted about his gamekeeper trespassing.”
“A damned set of poachers he keeps on that place of his. ’Tis a pity for the county he ever came into it. The neighbourhood did well enough without him, I’m sure, all the years he was playing the rake in London and foreign parts.”
“It makes me sick, if I may say so,” replied the faithful servant, “the way I hear some folks sing his praises for a fine gentleman:—it does, indeed.”
“There are some folks who are asses, Bartholomew,” said the Squire, warmly. “Sing his praises for a fine jackanapes! Fine gentleman, d’ye say? How can anybody be a fine gentleman on a beggarly three hundred a year? Why, don’t you know, don’t all the county know, ’twas his poverty drove him down here to his estate to be a plague among us? Ecod, who are the rest of us, I wonder, solid country gentlemen of position in the county, to be come over by this town-bred fop with his Frenchified ways? Give me a plain, home-bred Englishman, and hang all these conceited pups that come among us trying to put us down in talk with their London wit and foreign manners!”
The extraordinary heat manifested by the Squire during this oration was a warning to his man to desist from the subject, lest he might himself become the victim of the wrath it engendered. Moreover, the outdoor passage of an inn was a rather public place for such exhibitions, though fortunately there was at the time no audience.
“Will you wait for dinner in your room, sir?” suggested Bartholomew, after a moment’s cooling pause.
“No, I won’t. Tom Thornby won’t beat a retreat, neither, for any man! I’ll stay till he comes, now that I’m here, and if he tries any of his London airs on me, I’ll give him as good as he sends.”
Bartholomew was too well acquainted with the obstinacy of this vain, grown-up child, his master, to oppose; and almost at that moment a post-chaise turned in from the street, requiring both Thornby and the man servant to stand close to the wall for safety.