There was a fatality about it! The thing was obviously in the hands of Destiny. The door shut-to with a bang. A pretty little gloved hand drew up the window, and the fly drove off with Miss Merlin inside, on the road to Castle Cropper.
Some men are the favourites of Fortune! others, the butts and targets of Fate. I endeavour at all times to bear my reverses with a sulky equanimity. I retired accordingly, to derive what consolation I could from an elaborate and protracted breakfast by a good fire, and then proceeded into the bar to smoke.
In these ingenious days one cannot but be struck with the many devices that exist for the discovery of character. One man finds you out by your handwriting; another by the tone of your voice; a third judges exclusively from the shape of your hat; and I have met an extremely far-seeing foreigner who professed to learn, not your fortune, as the gipsies do, but your tastes and disposition, from the lines on the palm of your hand. I think I should myself be inclined to judge of a man’s style by the sort of carriage he drives. This tendency—superstition—call it what you will, prompts me to take rather a careful survey of such vehicles as I come across, and therefore it was that, observing a strange dog-cart in the inn-yard as I traversed its stones, with an unlighted cigar in my mouth, I paused to examine more minutely the unfamiliar equipage.
So slang a turn-out it has not been my fortune to meet with, before or since. Imagine a very high box, narrowing considerably towards the top, on which, judging by the cushions and hand-rail, it is fair to conclude the driver is supposed to sit, perched on a pair of extremely tall wheels, painted red, and picked out with a staring yellow. Imagine the shafts of this contrivance, perfectly straight, and of great strength and substance, nearly on a level with the withers of the unfortunate animal that has to draw it. Imagine the old machine, wickered, and lacquered, and glazed, and polished to the most dazzling pitch of brilliancy, attached to the person of a well-bred, crop-eared, vicious-looking bay mare, herself wearing as little harness as is compatible with the fact of her being fastened to anything at all, and that little of the colour and appearance of untanned leather. Add to these, a tall whip with a yellow crop, long enough to drive four-in-hand, a pair of enormous lamps, and a white bull-terrier coiled on the foot-rug, licking his lips, with a bloodthirsty expression of countenance, and winking hideously with his ominous and ill-looking eyes.