Pridgeon turned once more on the Jimmy and, having pulled up the horses and gazed at the Tableau, remarked:
"Blow me tight if I didn't think the wheel'd do that afore we started. Blow me right and tight!"
By this time, all the village stood in a circle and supplied an exhaustive commenting upon the sad event.
"She's putt her futt through her petticutt," whooped grandmother.
"Blarm 'un if the old buoy's knee ain't streaked like somebody's baäd baäcon."
"So it be, buoy, so it be," came the delighted rejoinder.
"Look, see the seat of his breeches!" cried a shapely hussy.
"I never saw such a power o' mud, why 'e's like a brown paäper plaster behind. Poor soul!"
"Horse ain't hurt?" asked a sharp-featured, bow-legged individual with professional anxiety.
Four or five hobbledehoys had assisted the Beau to his feet and volunteered to show him the way to the _Green Dragon_. As that hostelry stood exactly opposite the scene of the disaster, the offer savoured of something more than mere friendliness.
Mrs. Courteen was whirling round and round, like a kitten after her tail, trying to ascertain the precise amount of damage close to her train; a good-natured booby stuck his foot on the skirt to steady it for her inspection, and in doing so made the rent more irreparable.
"Better go to the _Green Dragon_, your honour," said Pridgeon, as spruce as when he started.
"Better go to h----, you dunderhead," said the Beau, very white with well-bred passion and the shock of the catastrophe. No fragile vase of Dresden or of azure Sêvres, no figure of opalescent Worcester, no violet-flowered teapot of Lowestoft that ever fell from a proud cabinet through the careless sweep of a chambermaid's broom, was to be so deeply commiserated as Mr. Horace Ripple. These painted monuments of care betray their inherent beauty even in the dainty particles that proclaim their wreckage, but a fop with muddied breeches--why, in the very first chapter of this story we trembled to behold the circumference of the least dignified part of the Beau's anatomy protruding from beneath a bedstead; and on that occasion, it was gay with the flowers of a silk dressing-gown.
I do not think that the Great little Man ever recovered from this outrage to his personal attire, for to the very end of his modish days, he would wear a coat cut an inch or two lower than was readily allowed by the least conservative tailor in his employment.