“Oh come, if a man isn’t allowed to laugh! It’s for the fun of the thing. I’ve seen you in a good many queer circumstances, but I never saw you at a society ball dancing with girls--of that sort, don’t you know. I’ll get you an introduction to the Duchess,” cried Eddy, “and you can ask her to dance. By Jove what fun it will be! I shouldn’t wonder if you had what they call a great success. But mind, whatever you do, you must learn up the part.” “Where shall I get it?” said Johnson. The idea of success in the world which was “smart” turned his head. The thought went through his mind that it might be but the beginning of triumph. The Duchess, if she found his dancing to her mind, might invite him during the season. She might ask him to the Cumbraes, that princely mansion. The light swam in Johnson’s eyes. He felt as if he were on the verge of a new world. He could learn a part with any man, and mind his cues and enter into his _rôle_. Where could he get it? He ran over all the plays he knew, which was saying a good deal, but he could not remember the part of a don. “Hang it all,” he said, “I wish you had introduced me as a plunger or a Guardsman, or something of that sort. I could have got ‘em as easy as look at ‘em; but I don’t remember no don.” “There are plenty in novels,” said Eddy. “Oh, novels!--I don’t read any except the yellow kind. I say how d’ye dress the part? Is it a long coat and a white tie? or what is it? I don’t know nothing about it,” said Johnson, falling in his anxiety into the dialect of his kind. “In the evening,” said Eddy, “all gentlemen dress alike, except when they’re parsons. Johnson of St. Chad’s is not a parson. Probably in the day time he wears an easy coat, and smokes a pipe. But we’d better leave that. You only want your evening things--I suppose they’re decently cut--and a flower in your coat; but mind you have not a bouquet like a coachman at a drawing-room.” “I think I know enough for that,” said the novice; “but you’d better get me one of those dashed novels if I’m to learn up the part.” They walked on in silence for a few minutes towards the moor; great visions filled the mind of Johnson. “I say,” he resumed after a while, “couldn’t you get me asked for the shooting one day? The young fellow aint much of a swell, whatever the rest of them may be; and I should like to shoulder a gun on a real moor, just for once in a way. It’s a thing to have done. The Governor would like it too. ‘My son’s up shooting in Scotland,’ he’d tell everybody, ‘with some of his smart friends.’” “He can say it all the same, whether or not,” said Eddy. “That’s true; but it feels much nicer when there’s something in it. I say--I don’t mind standing a sovereign to the gamekeeper, if you’ll manage that. I’d give a sovereign any day to have some birds to send up to town with that heather stuff round ‘em, and a label, ‘From A. Johnson, Esquire.’”