Bent on avoiding young ladies, and having no taste for the society of old ones, Harry wandered about disconsolately, until, attracted by a dark archway and a worm-eaten winding staircase, which, as Master Tom expressed it, looked “jolly queer and ghostified;” he made his way up the mouldering steps until he found himself at the top of a battlemented tower, where he was repaid for the trouble of the ascent, by a beautiful and widely-extending view. Having contrived to get rid of the voluble and restless Etonian, Coverdale seated himself on a projecting fragment of masonry, and glancing round to see that he was not observed or observable, lit a cigar, and, his ruffled feelings being soothed by its mollifying influence, remained lazily watching the movements of the pleasure-seekers--his reflections running somewhat after the following fashion:-- “There’s old Crane maundering about after Alice as usual--don’t think he gets on with her though, rather t’other way--decided case of jibbing I should say. She looked awfully bored and frightened too, up in that phaeton with him; and no wonder either, for the old boy is nothing of a whip--I should be sorry to trust a cat of mine to his driving. Ah! she’s given him the slip, and that Miss Marsden has taken him in tow. I can’t make that woman out--she _is_ so civil to him; perhaps she thinks the affair with Alice may miss fire, and she is looking out for the reversion of the cotton spinner herself. Arthur says she’s very poor, and that there are a large family of them; if so, it’s not a bad dodge, and, supposing she plays her cards well, one by no means unlikely to succeed. There’s that confounded puppy D’Almayne swaggering up to Alice, stroking his stupid moustaches--yes, and she smiles and takes his arm, of course--believes all his lies, and thinks him a hero, I dare say. Oh! the poor silly fools of women that can’t distinguish a man from a jackanapes--I should have fancied Alice had more sense; but they’re all alike. Look at the idiot simpering; that’s only to show his white teeth now: the brute has no idea of a real joke--hasn’t got it in him. Well, thank goodness, it’s no concern of mine: but if I were Crane, I’d interfere with his flirting rather. The fellow talks as if he were a dreadful fire-eater--I should like to try what he’s made of: but I expect it’s all talk and nothing else--I wish I could coax him into putting on the gloves with me some day--I’d astonish his moustaches for him. Well, he has walked her off at all events. I wonder where they’re going to. Are they? Yes--no--yes, by Jove, if he isn’t going to take her across that field which Tom and I rode through, where the bull was grazing--the brute is mischievous, too, or I am much mistaken--confound the fool, he’ll go and frighten the poor girl out of her senses, and, perhaps, get her hurt into the bargain; for, if the bull really is vicious, ten to one Moustaches loses pluck, and bolts, or something ridiculous.