“I might ’a’ known it! The leg o’ lamb, too, I suppose. Everything for Foxwell. Does the man think nobody else has a soul to save?” “The leg o’ lamb isn’t his, sir. ’Tis roasting so as to be ready against the stage-coach arrives.” “Then I’ll have the best cut o’ that. First come, first served:—let the stage-coach passengers take what’s left. A beggarly lot, or they’d have coaches o’ their own to ride in. And send up a bottle o’ the best wine you’ve got in the house. I’ll dine as well as Mr. Foxwell, rat him!” Leaving Mrs. Betteridge to put his orders into execution, he went out to the passage and called his man Bartholomew, to whom he communicated his intentions. “Very good, your Worship,” said Bartholomew, in the manner of a servant somewhat privileged. He was a lean, hardy fellow, of his master’s own age, with a long, astute-looking countenance. “I see Mr. Foxwell’s man Caleb in the yard, sir.” “Ay, and Mr. Foxwell himself will be here presently. A sight for sore eyes, eh? If I’d ’a’ known he was coming here, I’d ’a’ stopped at the Crown. No, damme if I would, neither! I won’t be kept from going where I choose by any man, least of all a man I don’t like. What’s Foxwell to me?” “It’s small blame to you for not liking him, sir, if you’ll pardon my saying it, after the way he acted about his gamekeeper trespassing.” “A damned set of poachers he keeps on that place of his. ’Tis a pity for the county he ever came into it. The neighbourhood did well enough without him, I’m sure, all the years he was playing the rake in London and foreign parts.” “It makes me sick, if I may say so,” replied the faithful servant, “the way I hear some folks sing his praises for a fine gentleman:—it does, indeed.” “There are some folks who are asses, Bartholomew,” said the Squire, warmly. “Sing his praises for a fine jackanapes! Fine gentleman, d’ye say? How can anybody be a fine gentleman on a beggarly three hundred a year? Why, don’t you know, don’t all the county know, ’twas his poverty drove him down here to his estate to be a plague among us? Ecod, who are the rest of us, I wonder, solid country gentlemen of position in the county, to be come over by this town-bred fop with his Frenchified ways? Give me a plain, home-bred Englishman, and hang all these conceited pups that come among us trying to put us down in talk with their London wit and foreign manners!” The extraordinary heat manifested by the Squire during this oration was a warning to his man to desist from the subject, lest he might himself become the victim of the wrath it engendered. Moreover, the outdoor passage of an inn was a rather public place for such exhibitions, though fortunately there was at the time no audience. “Will you wait for dinner in your room, sir?” suggested Bartholomew, after a moment’s cooling pause.