Sam tapped his own dapper and well-curved legs with a light gold-headed riding-whip, and his favourite mare, who was under the charge of a lad down the lane, gave a whinny to him. “There’s nothing she don’t know,” said Sam; “and her name it is Sally.” I was not sure which of the two fillies—for I knew that he called his sweetheart one, and her name too was “Sally”—my friend was thus commending. But I rose to the situation, and said—“Let us go, and rout the fellow out.” “I was sure you would stand by a brother Briton,” cried Sam, shaking hands very heartily; “and you won’t find me forget it, Kit, when old Crumbly Pot comes back again. I am keeping a look-out for you there, as I gave you my word to do. It has been kettles to mend, I am told, in the fen-land where he hails from. I know a Jew fellow who brought him to book, and was very nearly quodding him. He won’t be back this side of Christmas, unless my friend is a liar, and then I shall do you as good a turn as you are going to do me now. Can you make it fit to come to-morrow? I’ll put my Sally in the spider, and call for you about ten o’clock. You can tell old Punnets, that you want to see your Aunt Parslow about important business—for important it is and no mistake. Think of a dirty Frenchman nobbling sweet Sally Chalker, and all her cash!” Old Punnets—as he insolently called my uncle—was glad enough that I should pay a visit to my aunt, or rather my mother’s aunt, Miss Parslow, who was said to be worth at least 10,000_l._, as well as a very nice house, and large garden, and three or four meadows by the river Mole. “You should never neglect such folk,” he said; “you have no proper sense of the plainest duty. She has only one relation as near as you are, and he has got plenty of tin of his own. You might cut him out easy enough, if you tried, and now is the nick of time for it. Hannah Parslow is as proud as Punch, I know; and if you can only put it to her, with a little of the proper grease, of course, that your mother’s son is considered unfit to marry a young lady, because he cannot cut a shine,—who can tell what she might do for you? She doesn’t spend half of her income, I know. I was thinking of it only the other night. And she might allow you two hundred a year, without stinting a pinch of Keating’s powder. You love dogs, and dogs love you. Half the dogs in the village come to see you home. Make up to Jupiter, and Juno, and the other bow-wows she has taken to her bosom, and you’ll never want my thirty shillings a week, nor yet the little balance of your father and mother’s money. You go and see her, Kit. Don’t lose a day. You may accept a lift from that fast Sam Henderson; but throw him over, as soon as you have got it.”