As Harry Stanhope ceased to be the idol of the gentlemen and ladies, he became also less of the pet and more of the butt of the lower grade into which he was increasingly thrown. The young farmers and tradesmen with whom he fraternised, not only at market and in cricket-matches and games of bowls, but on every occasion, public and private, still looked up to him in many things, and copied him—not always to their benefit, but a stronger tincture of contempt was getting infused into their liking. This was especially true of Jack Dadd, who, while he continued proud of being hand-in-glove with Harry Stanhope, did not scruple to make a cat’s-paw of his friend, and rather enjoyed leading him into a scrape and leaving him there. This disloyalty and shade of baseness did not spring necessarily from Jack’s class or calling, and they had still less to do with his natural good temper. They belonged to long-standing class feuds and the lingering spite thus engendered. It was almost inevitably wreaked on a person who, however ready to forget social prejudices, sprang still from the privileged order. Oliver humbled himself in the room of Harry Stanhope, and through Harry in the place of Fan, to remonstrate with Jack Dadd. ‘You are older than Stanhope, Jack,’ Oliver reminded his quondam friend, who had bragged earlier of their friendship, ‘and you were not brought up in the very odour of thoughtlessness.’ ‘So I suppose I ain’t fit to go about with your gentleman brother-in-law, unless as his keeper. “Not if I know it;” “Not for Joe,”’ interrupted Jack, rudely and flippantly. ‘I ain’t so fond of being a fellow’s keeper, as you are, Constable, though you don’t seem to like to try it on Harry Stanhope. I thought you had got a lesson and rid yourself of such priggishness, long ago. It ain’t a compliment to Stanhope to make out he’s not fit to take care of hisself, or to choose his company and be on equal terms with them. Lord! it was a funny sort of equality last night when I cut my stick, just as he was challenging the stableman at the “Wheat Ears” to box with him, Dummy being to hold their jackets, I take it. Stanhope ain’t proud; I’ll say that for him, neither when he’s as tight as a lord, nor when he’s as sober as a judge—which don’t often happen now-a-days. It comes to this, Constable, I’ve had enough of your sauce of dictation. There was not so much difference between that and your sister’s airs, and a fine pass they’ve brought her to: got her a gentleman for a husband, no doubt—and, what is more, he’s worth the two of you; but he’s made her work for him so as keeping a shop would have been a joke by comparison, and he’ll kick the causeway all the same.’ After that conversation there was an end to friendly intercourse between Oliver and Jack, and to any fond hope which the former had once been so conceited as to entertain, of swaying his brother-tradesman to higher aims.