The leading desire of this good old woman's life was, that her sister Agnes should come back with her husband, the Major, and take possession of the castle. Again, Alice could not be content, unless her father could be induced to come back and take up his residence at Clere. And letters having failed to produce the desired effect in both instances, the Major, saying that he was quite comfortable where he was, and the Captain urging that the English winters would be too vigorous for his constitution; under these circumstances, I say, I, the CONFIDANT of the family, within fifteen months of landing at Plymouth, found myself in a hot omnibus with a Mahomedan driver, jolting and bumping over the desert of Suez on my way back to Australia, charged to bring the old folks home, or never show my face again.
And it was after this journey that the scene described in the first chapter of this book took place; when I read aloud to them from the roll of manuscript mentioned there, my recollections of all that had happened to us during so many years, But since I have come back to England, these "Recollections" have been very much enlarged and improved by the assistance of Major Buckley, Agnes, and Captain Brentwood.
For I succeeded in my object, and brought them back in triumph through the Red Sea, across the Isthmus of Suez, and so by way of the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, the English Channel, Southampton Water, the South-Western railway, and Alice's new dark-blue barouche, safe and sound to Clere and the castle, where they all are at this present speaking, unless some of them are gone out a walking.
As for Tom Troubridge and Mary, they are so exceedingly happy and prosperous, that they are not worth talking about. They will come either by the Swiftsure or the Norfolk, and we have got their rooms ready for them. They say that their second child, the boy, is one of the finest riders in the colony.
"You have forgotten some one after all," says the reader, after due examination. "A man we took some little interest in. It is not much matter though, we shall be glad when you have done."
Is this the man you mean?
I am sitting in Sam's "den" at Clere. He is engaged in receiving the "afterdavy" of a man who got his head broke by a tinker at the cricket-match in the park (for Sam is in the commission, and sits on the bench once a month "a perfect Midas," as Mrs. Wattlegum would say).
I am busy rigging up one of these wonderful new Yankee spoons with a view to killing a villanous pike, who has got into the troutwater. I have just tied on the thirty-ninth hook, and have got the fortieth ready in my fingers, when a footman opens the door, and says to me,--
"If you please, sir, your stud-groom would be glad to see you."
I keep two horses of all work and a grey pony, so that the word "stud"
before the word groom in the last sentence must be taken to refer to my little farm, on which I rear a few colts annually.
"May he come in, Sam?" I ask.
"Of course! uncle Jeff," says he.
And so there comes in a little old man, dressed in the extreme of that peculiar dandyism which is affected by retired jockeys and trainers, and which I have seen since attempted, with indifferent success, by a few young gentlemen at our great universities. He stands in the door and says,--
"Mr. Plowden has offered forty pound for the dark chestnut colt, sir."
"Dick," I say (mark that, if you please) "Dick, I think he may have the brute."
And so, my dear reader, I must at last bid you heartily farewell. I am not entirely without hope that we may meet again.