Patroness of
England's National Sports. We might turn her to that purpose; wander over
England with a tail of shouting riff-raft; have exhibitions, join in
them, display our accomplishments; issue challenges to fence, shoot,
walk, run, box, in time: the creature has muscle. It's one way of
crowning a freak; we follow the direction, since the deed done can't be
undone; and a precious poetical life, too! You may get as royally
intoxicated on swipes as on choice wine; win a name for yourself as the
husband of such a wife; a name in sporting journals and shilling
biographies: quite a revival of the Peerage they have begun to rail at!

'I would not wish to leave you,' said Carinthia.

'You have chosen,' said Fleetwood.

CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH THE BRIDE FROM FOREIGN PARTS IS GIVEN A TASTE OF OLD ENGLAND

Cheers at an open gate of a field saluted the familiar scarlet of the
Earl of Fleetwood's coach in Kentish land. They were chorister cheers,
the spontaneous ringing out of English country hearts in homage to the
nobleman who brightened the heaviness of life on English land with a
spectacle of the noble art distinguishing their fathers. He drove along
over muffling turf; ploughboys and blue butcher-boys, and smocked old
men, with an approach to a hundred-weight on their heels, at the trot to
right and left; all hoping for an occasional sight of the jewel called
Kitty, that he carried inside. Kitty was there.

Kitty's eyes are shut. Think of that: cradled innocence and angels'
dreams and the whole of the hymn just before ding-dong-bang on noses and
jaws! That means confidence? Looks like it. But Kitty's not asleep you
try him. He's only quiet because he has got to undergo great exertion.
Last fight he was knocked out of time, because he went into it honest
drunk, they tell. And the earl took him up, to give him a chance of
recovering his good name, and that's Christian. But the earl, he knows a
man as well as a horse. He's one to follow. Go to a fayte down at
Esslemont, you won't forget your day. See there, he's brought a lady on
the top o' the coach. That seems for to signify he don't expect it's
going to be much of a bloody business. But there's no accounting. Anyhow,
Broadfield 'll have a name in the papers for Sunday reading. In comes t'
other lord's coach. They've timed it together closes they have.

They were pronounced to be both the right sort of noblemen for the
country. Lord Brailstone's blue coach rattled