"Well, I don't think you do, old feller!" said Mr. Bouncer, puffing away at his pipe. "I'm sorry I was in the road, though! because, though I fight shy of those sort of things myself, yet I don't want to interfere with the little weaknesses of other folks. But come and have a pipe, old feller, and we'll talk matters over, and see what pips are on the cards, and what's the state of the game." Now, a pipe was Mr. Bouncer's panacea for every kind of indisposition, both mental and bodily. [AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 251] CHAPTER V. MR. VERDANT GREEN MEETS WITH THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. <VG251.JPG> MENTION had frequently been made by the members of the Honeywood family, but more especially by Miss Patty, of a cousin - a male cousin - to whom they all seemed to be exceedingly partial - far more partial, as Mr. Verdant Green thought, with regard to Miss Patty, than he would have wished her to have been. This cousin was Mr. Frank Delaval, a son of their father's sister. According to their description, he possessed good looks, and an equivalently good fortune, with all sorts of accomplishments, both useful and ornamental; and was, in short (in their eyes at least), a very admirable Crichton of the nineteenth century. Mr. Verdant Green had heard from Miss Patty so much of her cousin Frank, and of the pleasure they were anticipating from a visit he had promised shortly to make to them, that he had at length begun to suspect that the young lady's maiden meditations were not altogether "fancy free," and that her thoughts dwelt upon this handsome cousin far more than was palatable to Mr. Verdant Green's feelings. In the most unreasonable manner, therefore, he conceived a violent antipathy to Mr. Frank Delaval, even before he had set eyes upon him, and considered that the Honeywood family had, one and all, greatly overrated him. But these suppositions and suspicions made him doubly anxious to come to an understanding with Miss Patty before the arrival of the dreaded Adonis; and it was this thought that had helped to nerve him through the terrors of the orchard scene, and which, but for Mr. Bouncer's ~malapropos~ intrusion, would have brought things to a crisis. However, after he had had a talk with Mr. Bouncer, and had been fortified by that little gentleman's pithy admonitions to "go in and win," and to "strike while the iron's hot," and that "faint heart never won a nice young 'ooman," he determined to seek out Miss Patty at once, and bring to an end their unfinished conversation. For this purpose he returned to the hall, where he found a great commotion, and a carriage at the door; and out of the carriage jumped a handsome young man, with a black moustache, who ran up to the open hall-door (where Miss Patty [252 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]