Mr. Naggett, stirring the fire with his boot, and winking facetiously on Miss Lushington, as he drank her health in his hot negus, and asked her whether she had ordered her wedding-bonnet yet, obligingly remarked, that “it was a cold night, and he was sorry to see my arm in a sling;” also “that he had heard of my accident, and hoped it wouldn’t be long before I _over-got_ it,” with which friendly wish, expressed in a compound verb, he finished his negus, and ordered some more, calling Miss L. “my dear,” unblushingly, to my excessive disgust. He then drew his chair to the fire, expressed his astonishment that Tips had gone to “perch,” as he called it, and proceeded to make himself agreeable.
“A nasty fall, sir, yours must have been, as I understand,” said he, “and it’s well as it wasn’t worse. You’ve a nice-ish team standing here, but you’ll excuse _me_, sir, they’re not exactly the _class_ of horse for a gentleman like you to ride. I’ve been fond of horses all my life, from a boy, I may say, and I’m forty years of age now: forty years of age, though perhaps you wouldn’t think it, and in that time I’ve learned to keep my eyes open. Now, sir, you don’t ride so very light, I’ll be bound to say.”
I am a little touchy about my weight, I confess. I believe most men are, the heavy ones liking to be thought lighter and the light ones heavier than they really are. “I ride thirteen stone,” I replied. “Thirteen stone, to a pound; I weigh every day of my life, and I haven’t varied since I was five-and-twenty.”
“Thirteen stone! indeed, sir!” replied Mr. Naggett, running his eye, as I thought, in a very free-and-easy manner over my proportions. “Well, I shouldn’t have thought it. But you’re thick, sir; thick and a _little_ fleshy. Now, your nags is hardly thirteen-stoners, sir—not in a country like this; I’m sure you must agree with me?”
Speechless with indignation, I seized the poker and split—not Mr. Naggett’s head, but a burning coal in the very centre of the grate, without farther reply. This coolest of butchers proceeded unhesitatingly:—
“It’s a pity to see a gentleman undermounted, specially in a country like this: so dangerous too! Why, sir, all the worst falls as I’ve known take place down here in our Soakington district, have been entirely owing to gentlemen riding horses below their weight. There was Squire Overend, only last season, got a little thorough-bred weed he called Happy Joe, as he swore nothing could touch. No more they couldn’t when the ground was light; but look what happened. There came a splash of wet, and the ground up to our girths, just as we’ve got it now, and likely to have it for the next six months; and Happy Joe, he turns a complete somersault over a stile the Squire puts him at, and falls on to his rider with a squelch, breaking the cantle of his own saddle into shivers, and inflicting such severe internal injuries on Squire Overend, that he has never been out hunting since, and all from obstinacy—sheer obstinacy, I call it; for I told the Squire myself how it would be, from the first.”