PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. VOL. 107. JULY 28, 1894. LORD ORMONT'S MATE AND MATEY'S AMINTA. BY G***GE M*R*D*TH. VOLUME I. This was a school. Small wonder if the boys, doubly sensitive under a supercilious head-master of laughter-moving invention, poised for a moment on the to and fro of a needless knockabout jig-face with chin and mouth all a-pucker for the inquisitive contest. The stout are candid puff-balls blowing in an open sea of purposeless panting, hard to stir into an elephantine surging from arm-chairs; and these are for frock-coats, and they can wear watch-chains. So these boys understood it. MURAT here, MURAT there, MURAT everywhere, with SHALDERS a-burst at the small end of a trumpet, cheeks rounded to the full note of an usher's eulogy, like a roar and no mistake, arduous in the moment, throbbing beneath a schoolmaster's threadbare waistcoat, a heart all dandelions to the plucker, yellow on top with white shifts for feather-fringe; or a daisy, transferring petulance on a bath-chair wheezing and groaning--on the swing for the capture of a fare--or shall it be a fair, that too a wheeze permitted to propriety hoist on a flaxy, grinning chub. This was SHALDERS. Lady CHARLOTTE EGLETT appeared. Hers was the brother, the Lord ORMONT we know, a general of cavalry not a doubt, all sabretache, spurs and plumes, dashing away into a Hindoo desert like the soldier he is, a born man sword in fist. She wrote, "Come to me. He is said to be married." He spoke to her. "My father was a soldier." "He too?" she interposed. Their eyes clashed. "You are the tutor for me," she added. "For your grandson," corrected he. It was a bargain. They struck it. She glanced right and left, showing the town-bred tutor her hedges at the canter along the main road of her scheme. [Illustration] His admiration of the cavalry-brother rose to a fever-point. Not good with the pen, Lady CHARLOTTE opined; hard to beat at a sword-thrust, thought MATEY. "Be his pen-holder," put in the lady. "I _would_," said he, smiling again. She split sides, convulsed in a take-offish murmur, a roll here, a roll there, rib-tickling with eyes goggling on the forefront of a sentence all rags, tags, and splutters like a jerry-builder gaping at a waste land pegged out in plots, foundations on the dig, and auctioneer prowling hither thither, hammer ready for the "gone" which shall spin a nobody's land into a somebody's money passing over counter or otherwise pocket to pocket, full to empty or almost empty, with a mowling choke-spark of a batter-foot all quills for the bean-feast. So they understood it.