“If he takes to drinking, the young warmint!” thought Isaac, “I’ll larrup the skin off him!” And thus consoling himself, the old man turned his cheek once more to the chill, misty heavens, and shook his head. His horses were done up; the door locked, and the key in his pocket; The Boy also secured by the same means in the loft. Master could not arrive till eight or nine o’clock. It was the hour when, at The Grange, he was accustomed to see the pigs feed and the chickens to roost. He wished he was back in the Old Country: the time hung heavily on the old groom’s hands.
“Nothing to do, and lots of time to do it in! that seems to be about the size of it—eh, governor?” said a voice at his elbow; and, turning round, Isaac confronted a short and dapper personage, whom, by a sort of freemasonry, he had no difficulty in recognising as one of his own profession.
At any other time he would have treated this worthy’s advances to acquaintance with sovereign contempt; but his spirits were depressed and his heart solitary, so he vented a grunt of acquiescence, which, for him, was wonderfully polite.
“I think I see you arrive yesterday, with two or three nags,” continued this affable functionary, “when I was out a hairin’ some o’ mine; and you’re puttin’ up close by my place. Come in, governor, and take something hot, to keep the cold off till we become better acquainted.”
With this hospitable offer, Isaac found himself following his new friend into a cosy little tap-room, with red curtains and a sanded floor, which apartment they had all to themselves; and whilst “something hot”—a delicious compound of yolk of egg, brown sugar, warm beer, and cordial gin—was being got ready, he had time to study the exterior of his new acquaintance.
Probably the utmost ingenuity of the tailor’s art must have been exhausted in constructing trousers so tight as the pair which clung to that person’s legs. Not a crease had they, nor a fold anywhere; and, unless the man slept in them, it was difficult to conceive how they could conveniently be used as articles of daily apparel. The person’s boots, too, were neat, round-toed Wellingtons; his waistcoat descended far below his hips; and the waist-buttons of his grey-mixture coat were unusually low and wide apart. A cream-coloured silk neckcloth, secured by a horse-shoe pin, set off a pale, sharp-looking countenance, speaking of hot stables and dissipation, while the closest possible crop of hair and whiskers did justice to a shaved hat with an exceedingly flat brim. A few splashes of mud on the boots and trousers showed he had been lately on horseback; and he held up one of his thin little legs as he took his seat, and contemplated the stains with a grin of morbid satisfaction.