The second time the white-waistcoated functionary arrived with “another of the same,” things wore a far different aspect. Everybody was talking at once on the same subject. Like a bag-fox before an unruly pack of hounds, the topic of steeple-chasing had been started for the general confusion, and each ran his own line and threw his tongue for his own especial encouragement; there seemed no doubt about the long-talked-of race coming off. Preliminaries were adjusted, weights discussed, and a country suggested. Even Struggles seemed to have got over his aversion to the mongrel sport. But on the stout Ganymede’s third and last appearance with “the landlord’s bottle,” the storm was at its loudest, Mr. Sawyer laying down the law with the best. Betting-books were out: even the Reverend had produced what he called “some memorandums;” and the only intelligible sounds, amidst the clamour, were the ominous words “five-to-two”—current odds which everybody seemed to lay, and nobody to take. The discreet servant then whispered to his master that a second edition of coffee was ready to go into the drawing-room, and ere long a glass of brown sherry all round screwed our friends’ courage up to face the ladies once more.
Each man accordingly composed his features into a vacant simper, pulled his neckcloth up, and his wristbands down, and straddled into the presence of those indulgent beings, with an abortive attempt to look as if he, individually, had been drinking little or no wine.
Cissy was at the pianoforte. If Mr. Sawyer had thought her charming before, what must have been his opinion of that sparkling young lady now, seen through the medium of a fair share of champagne at dinner, and the best part of two bottles of claret afterwards? Lights, dress, and a general atmosphere of luxury and refinement, have a wonderful effect in enhancing the attractions of the fair. Alas, that we should have lived to admit it! Though the poet may opine that “beauty unadorned is adorned the most,” our hackneyed taste cannot but confess that it prefers the French maid’s _coiffure_ to the dishevelled tresses; the trim silk stocking, and neat satin shoe, to the slippers down at heel; and the shapely _corsage_, with its abundant _crinoline_, to the limp and unassuming dressing-gown. Mr. Sawyer was quite satisfied with Cissy as she was.