'And, I say, Jem, I'll tell ee what I'll do; I'll
clap on ten guineas more upon what I offered for the brown mare.'
'Done! She's yours, Tom, then, for ninety guineas!'
'Gie's your hand upon it!' cried Tom Southall, jumping up from his
chair, and stretching a fist as big as a leg of mutton--well, say
lamb--over the table. 'And here--here,' he added, with an exultant
chuckle, as he extricated a swollen canvas-bag from his
pocket--'here's the dibs at once.'
This transaction excited a great deal of surprise at our part of the
table; and Dutton was rigorously cross-questioned as to his reason for
parting with his favourite hunting mare.
'The truth is, friends,' said Dutton at last, 'I mean to give up
farming, and'----
'Gie up farmin'!' broke in half-a-dozen voices. 'Lord!'
'Yes; I don't like it. I shall buy a commission in the army. There'll
be a chance against Boney, now; and it's a life I'm fit for.'
The farmers looked completely agape at this announcement; but making
nothing of it, after silently staring at Dutton and each other, with
their pipes in their hands and not in their mouths, till they had gone
out, stretched their heads simultaneously across the table towards the
candles, relit their pipes, and smoked on as before.
'Then, perhaps, Mr Dutton,' said a young man in a smartly-cut
velveteen coat with mother-of-pearl buttons, who had hastily left his
seat further down the table--'perhaps you will sell the double Manton,
and Fanny and Slut?'
'Yes; at a price.
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