k
again--ere the flanks of the dear friendly brutes were in any way
cool--than Temple shouted enthusiastically, 'Richie, we shall do it yet!
I've been funking, but now I'm sure we shall do it. Janet said, "What's
the use of my coming over to dine at Riversley if Harry Richmond and you
don't come home before ten or eleven o'clock?" I told her we'd
do it by dinner-time: Don't you like Janet, Richie?--That is,
if our horses' hic-haec-hocks didn't get strained on this hard
nominative-plural-masculine of the article road. Don't you fancy yourself
dining with the captain, Richie? Dative huic, says old Squire Gregory. I
like to see him at dinner, because he loves the smell of his wine. Oh!
it's nothing to boast of, but we did drink them under the table, it can't
be denied. Janet heard of it. Hulloa! you talk of a hunting-knife. What
do you say to a pair of skates? Here we are in for a frost of six weeks.
It strikes me, a pair of skates . . .'

This was the champagne in Temple. In me it did not bubble to speech, and
I soon drew him on at a pace that rendered conversation impossible.
Uberly shouted after us to spare the horses' legs. We heard him twice out
of the deepening fog. I called to Temple that he was right, we should do
it. Temple hurrahed rather breathlessly. At the end of an hour I pulled
up at an inn, where I left the horses to be groomed and fed, and walked
away rapidly as if I knew the town, Temple following me with perfect
confidence, and, indeed, I had no intention to deceive him. We entered a
new station of a railway.

'Oh!' said Temple, 'the rest of the way by rail.'

When the railway clerk asked me what place I wanted tickets for, London
sprang to my mouth promptly in a murmur, and taking the tickets I replied
to Temple,

'The rest of the way by rail. Uberly's sure to stop at that inn'; but my
heart beat as the carriages slid away with us; an affectionate
commiseration for Temple touched me when I heard him count on our being
back at Riversley in time to dress for dinner.

He laughed aloud at the idea of our plumping down on Rippenger's school,
getting a holiday for the boys, tipping them, and then off with Julia,
exactly like two Gods of the Mythology, Apollo and Mercury.

'I often used to think they had the jolliest lives that ever were lived,'
he said, and trying to catch glimpses of the country, and musing, and
singing, he continued to feel like one of those blissful Gods until
wonder at the passage