unlucky usher--in terms, as he said, of some old
arrangement made by the Squire's predecessor as to school-salaries
during vacancy; to be applied, as the writ very coolly stated it, "for
behoof of Jack's destitute widow, in the event of his decease, and of
his numerous and indigent family."

Many of Jack's own family, who were present on this occasion,
remonstrated with him on the subject, foreseeing that if he went on as
he had begun and threatened to proceed, he must soon come to a rupture
with the Squire, which could end in nothing else than his being turned
out of house and hall, and thrown adrift upon the wide world, without a
penny in his pocket. But the majority--who were puffed up with more than
Jack's own madness and had a notion that by sheer boldness and bullying
on their part, the Squire would, after a time, be sure to give way,
encouraged Jack to go on at all hazards, and not to retract a hair's
breadth in his demands. And Jack, who had now become mischievously
crazed on the subject, and began to be as arrogant and conceited of his
own power and authority, as ever my Lord Peter had been in his proudest
and most pestilential days, was not slow to follow their advice.

'Twas of no consequence that a friend of the Squire's, who had known
Jack long, and had really a great kindness towards him, tried to bring
about an arrangement between him and the Squire upon very handsome
terms. He had a meeting with Jack;--at which he talked the matter over
in a friendly way--telling him that though the Squire must reserve in
his own hands the nomination of his own ushers, he had always been
perfectly willing to listen to reason in any objections that might be
taken to them; only some reason he must have, were it only that Jack
could not abide the sight of a red-nosed usher:--let that reason, such
as it was, be put on paper, and he would consider of it; and if, from
any peculiar idiosyncracy in Jack's temperament and constitution, he
found that his antipathy to red noses was unsuperable, probably he would
not insist on filling up the vacancy with a nose of that colour. Jack,
who was always more rational when alone than when he had got the
attorney and the more frantic members of his family at his elbow,
acknowledged, as he well might, that all this seemed very reasonable;
and that he really thought that on these terms the Squire and he would
have little difficulty in coming to an agreement. So they parted,
leaving the Squir