that Mr. Stirn would address
to him some words in approbation of his gallantry and in sympathy for
his bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken. That truly
great man, worthy prime minister of Hazeldean, might perhaps pardon a
dereliction from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to
the interests of the service, or redounded to the credit of the
chief; but he was inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences,--an
ill-timed, stupid, over-zealous obedience to orders, which, if it
established the devotion of the employee, got the employer into what
is popularly called a scrape! And though, by those unversed in the
intricacies of the human heart, and unacquainted with the especial
hearts of prime ministers and right-hand men, it might have seemed
natural that Mr. Stirn, as he stood still, hat in hand, in the middle
of the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by the mortification he had
received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would have felt that that young
gentleman was the proper object of his resentment, yet such a breach of
all the etiquette of diplomatic life as resentment towards a superior
power was the last idea that would have suggested itself to the profound
intellect of the premier of Hazeldean. Still, as rage, like steam, must
escape somewhere, Mr. Stirn, on feeling--as he afterwards expressed it
to his wife--that his "buzzom was a burstin'," turned with the natural
instinct of self-preservation to the safety-valve provided for the
explosion; and the vapours within him rushed into vent upon Lenny
Fairfield. He clapped his hat on his head fiercely, and thus relieved
his "buzzom."

"You young willain! you howdaeious wiper! and so all this blessed
Sabbath afternoon, when you ought to have been in church on your
marrow-bones, a praying for your betters, you has been a fitting with a
young gentleman, and a wisiter to your master, on the wery place of the
parridge hinstitution that you was to guard and pertect; and a bloodying
it all over, I declares, with your blaggard little nose!" Thus saying,
and as if to mend the matter, Mr. Stirn aimed an additional stroke at
the offending member; but Lenny mechanically putting up both arms to
defend his face, Mr. Stirn struck his knuckles against the large brass
buttons that adorned the cuff of the boy's coat-sleeve,--an incident
which considerably aggravated his indignation. And Lenny, whose spirit
was fairly roused at what the narrowness of his educat