"The woman is got very well, and is very well off now," interrupted Howard; "you need say nothing about that."
"Well, but my money, I must say about _that_," said the coachman. Here Howard observed, that Mr. Supine had remained at the door in a lounging attitude, and was quite near enough to overhear their conversation. Howard, therefore, to avoid exciting his attention by any mysterious whispers, walked away from the coachman; but in vain; he followed: "I'll peach," said he; "I must in my own defence."
"Stay till to-morrow morning," said Howard: "perhaps you'll be paid then."
The coachman, who was a good-natured fellow, said, "Well, I don't like making mischief among young gentlemen; I will wait till to-morrow, but not a day more, master, if you'd go down on your knees to me."
Mr. Supine, whose curiosity was fully awake, called to the coachman the moment Howard was out of hearing, and tried, by various questions, to draw the secret from him. The words, "_overturn of the coach--mulatto woman_," and the sentence, which the irritated coachman had pronounced in a raised voice, that "_young gentlemen should be above not paying handsome for their frolics_," had reached Mr. Supine's attentive ear, before Howard had been aware that the tutor was a listener. Nothing more could Mr. Supine draw, however, from the coachman, who now felt himself _upon honour_, having promised Howard not to _peach_ till the next morning. Difficulties stimulated Mr. Supine's curiosity; but he remained for the present satisfied in the persuasion that he had discovered _a fine frolic_ of the immaculate Mr. Charles Howard; his own pupil he did not suspect upon this occasion. Holloway's whisperings with the coachman had ended the moment Mr. Supine appeared at the door, and the tutor had in the same moment been so struck with the beautiful varnish of Lord Rawson's dog-cart, that his pupil might have whispered longer, without rousing his attention. Mr. Supine was further confirmed in his mistake about Howard, from the recollection of the mulatto woman, whom he had seen at the gardener's: he knew that she had been hurt by a fall from a stage-coach. He saw Howard much interested about her. All this he joined with what he had just overheard about _a frolic_, and he was rejoiced at the idea of implicating in this business Mr. Russell, whom he disliked.