“Tom, you’re drinking too much champagne!” exclaimed an elderly maiden sister of Mr. Hazlehurst, decidedly like a hippopotamus in face and figure. “Mr. D’Almayne, may I trouble you to hand me his glass, the boy will make himself poorly.” Thus appealed to, D’Almayne languidly extended his arm in the necessary direction, but the Etonian was not to be so easily despoiled of his beverage. “_Mille pardons_, mounseer!” he exclaimed, mimicking the affected half-foreign accent with which the exquisite Horace usually spoke; “_mais c’est tout à fait_--out of the question; _ne souhaitez-vous pas que vous pouvez l’obtenir?_--don’t you wish you may get it? Equally obliged to you, but I’d rather do my own drinking myself. Why, my dear Aunt Betsy, how dreadfully ungrateful of you, just when I was going to propose your health, too! Silence, gentlemen, for a toast! Come, Governor (to his father, who, delighted with the young pickle’s ready wit, was vainly endeavouring to preserve an appearance of majestic disapproval), fill up; D’Almayne, my boy, no heeltaps; are you all charged? ‘My Aunt Betsy, and the rest of her lovely sex!--hip! hip! hip! hurrah!’” So saying, and with a knowing wink at Coverdale, who, if the truth must be told, encouraged him in his inclination to be impertinent to D’Almayne, Master Tom tossed down his glass of champagne amidst a general chorus of laughter. And thus the _déjeûner_ passed off to all appearance merrily enough; though in two, if not more, of the company a smiling exterior hid an aching heart. “Have you seen the rabbit warren yet, Mr. Coverdale? Do come, there are such a lot of the beggars jumping about! I found my way there before luncheon, and it won’t take long,” exclaimed Tom Hazlehurst, grasping Harry’s arm imploringly. “It strikes me I shall be considered especially rude if I again absent myself,” was the reply. “Who by?--the women?” inquired Tom, scornfully. “Never mind them--poor, weak-minded, fickle things; there is nothing I consider a greater nuisance than to have a pack of silly girls dangling about one, that won’t leave a fellow alone; there, you needn’t toss your head and turn up your nose about it, Emily, beneficent Nature’s done that for you sufficiently already. Now will you come, Mr. Coverdale? there are some black rabbits among them, such rum shavers!” “Are there!” exclaimed Harry, eagerly. “I wonder whether I could contrive to buy a few couples of them; I want to get some black rabbits at the park excessively: come along, for our time is growing short, I expect.” And as he spoke, Coverdale strode off, entirely forgetful of the pretty Emily, with whom, on the strength of her juvenility, he had considered he might safely allow himself to laugh and talk, and to whom he had, therefore, been unconsciously rendering himself very agreeable.