"Yes, sir," the latter agreed. "I see the sun, which is very unusual at this season of the year." Mr. Moon gaped a smile, and Tarry's Apple began to rise. He had anticipated a surprized negative from the Beau, whereupon he intended to look very mysterious and say that after all perhaps he was mistaken. Thus, having impressed the bystanders with the notion that they were talking to a man of superhuman vision, he would offer an arm to Mrs. Courteen. "Run, Betty," exclaimed the latter, "and tell Mr. Thomas we await his escort." Thomas was at the footman's Pump Room, a hundred yards down the hill. Here, every morning he mused regretfully upon the decline of beer-drinking. Chalybeate to him was a sort of Jacobite liquor which was slowly supplanting the honest Esau ale. As for streams that spouted inexplicably from solid rocks, these he held to be an infringement of Moses' prerogative. He would unscrew the knob of his footman's cane for a morsel of Parmesan cheese and chew the cud of bitter reflection, while with the butt of his nose he would polish the silver ball till it shone with equal splendour. Betty found him thus occupied and, as he stalked after her in obedience to his summoning, she heard him mutter several times in quick succession, "Wells of Sodom! Waters of Gomorrah! Pillars of Salt!" Mrs. Courteen as she curtseyed her farewells to the Beau sank to the ground like a deflated balloon. This done she gathered her party into hearing and occupied their outward attention as they walked in the direction of the Crescent with a long and disjointed account of her health. "Why will you shake your muff so vehemently?" complained the Widow. "'Tis full of dust," said Phyllida. If it was, I am afraid Miss Courteen was trying to throw some of it into her mamma's eyes. _Chapter the Third_ THE BLUE BOAR While the Exquisite Mob circled round the central fane of AEsculapius, Mr. Charles Lovely had enough lack of taste and orthodoxy to make a heretick promenade in the low-lying water-meadows at the foot of the town. He had knocked three times at old General Morton's house in the Western Colonnade and delivered Miss Courteen's Valentine into the hands of Miss Sukey Morton's maid. She, poor soul, wore round her neck a brass button attached to a piece of string still reminiscent in tarred perfume of the Dorsetshire jetty down which she had wandered a year ago. It was streaking her breast with verdigris as if in some way prophetick of a heart that all too soon would be tarnished more irreparably by that faithless lover beyond the seas. Consequently Miss Morton's maid received the paquet with a sympathetick reverence learnt in long morning dreams when the sunlight splashed the walls of her garret in waves and ripples of faint gold. "Any name, your honour?" she asked. "I believe not."