The Amateur Gentleman

"And who is Jasper Gaunt?"

"Oh, delicious innocence! Ah, Bev! it's evident you are new to London.

Gaunt is an outcome of the City, as harsh and dingy as its bricks,

as flinty and hard as its pavements. Gad! most of our set know

Jasper Gaunt--to their cost! Who is Jasper Gaunt, you ask; well, my

dear fellow, question Slingsby of the Guards, he's getting deeper

every day, poor old Sling! Ask it, but in a whisper, at Almack's, or

White's, or Brooke's, and my Lord this, that, or t'other shall tell

you pat and to the point in no measured terms. Ask it of wretched

debtors in the prisons, of haggard toilers in the streets, of

pale-faced women and lonely widows, and they'll tell you, one and all,

that Jasper Gaunt is the harshest, most merciless bloodsucker that

ever battened and grew rich on the poverty and suffering of his

fellow men, and--oh here we are!"

Saying which, his Lordship abruptly turned down an unexpected and

very narrow side lane, where, screened behind three great trees, was

a small inn, or hedge tavern with a horse-trough before the door

and a sign whereon was the legend, "The Spotted Cow," with a

representation of that quadruped below, surely the very spottiest

of spotted cows that ever adorned an inn sign.

"Not much to look at, my dear Bev," said the Viscount, with a wave

of his hand towards the inn, "but it's kept by an old sailor, a

shipmate of the Bo'sun's. I can at least promise you a good breakfast,

and the ale you will find excellent. But first I want to show you a

very small demon of mine, a particularly diminutive fiend; follow me,

my dear fellow."

So, by devious ways, the Viscount led Barnabas round to the back of

the inn, and across a yard to where, beyond a gate, was a rick-yard,

and beyond that again, a small field or paddock. Now, within this

paddock, the admired of a group of gaping rustics, was the very

smallest groom Barnabas had ever beheld, for, from the crown of his

leather postilion's hat to the soles of his small top boots, he

could not have measured more than four feet at the very most.

"There he is, Bev, behold him!" said the Viscount, with his

whimsical smile, "the very smallest fiend, the most diminutive demon

that ever wore top boots!"

The small groom was engaged in walking a fine blood horse up and

down the paddock, or rather the horse was walking the groom, for

the animal being very tall and powerful and much given to divers

startings, snortings, and tossings of the head, it thus befell that

to every step the diminutive groom marched on terra firma, he took

one in mid-air, at which times, swinging pendulum-like, he poured

forth a stream of invective that the most experienced ostler, guard,

or coachman might well have envied, and all in a voice so gruff, so

hoarse and guttural, despite his tender years, as filled the

listening rustics with much apparent awe and wonder.