Thirteen
Bertram’s acquaintance with Lord Wivenhoe prospered rapidly.
After a day spent together at the races, each was so well pleased with the other that further assignations were made.
Lord Wivenhoe did not trouble to enquire into his new friend’s age, and Bertram naturally did not confess that he was only just eighteen years old.
Wivenhoe drove him to Epsom in his curricle, with a pair of dashing bays harnessed in the bar, and finding that Bertram was knowledgeable on the subject of horseflesh, good-naturedly offered to hand over the ribbons to him.
So well did Bertram handle the pair, and at such a spanking pace did he drive them, showing excellent judgement in the feathering of his corners, and catching the thong of his whip just as the Squire had taught him, that he needed no other passport to Wivenhoe’s favour.
Any man who could control the kind of prime cattle his lordship liked must be a capital fellow.
When he could do so without abating his cheerful conversation he was clearly a right ’un, at home to a peg, and worthy of the highest regard.
After some very interesting exchanges of reminiscences about incurable millers, roarers, lungers, half-bred blood-cattle, gingers, and slugs, which led inevitably to still more interesting stories of the chase, during the course of which both gentlemen found themselves perfectly in accord in their contempt of such ignoble persons as roadsters and skirters, and their conviction that the soundest of all maxims was, Get over the ground if it breaks your neck, formality was at an end between them, and his lordship was not only begging Bertram to call him Chuffy, as everyone else did, but promising to show him some of the rarer sights in town.
Bertram’s fortunes, ever since he had come to London, had fluctuated in a bewildering manner.
His first lucky evening with what he had swiftly learnt to refer to as St Hugh’s Bones had started him off on a career that seriously alarmed his staider friend, Mr Scunthorpe.
He had been encouraged by his luck to order a great many things from the various shops and warehouses where Mr Scunthorpe was known, and although a hat from Baxter’s, a pair of boots from Hoby’s, a seal from Rundell and Bridge, and a number of trifling purchases, such as a walking cane, a pair of gloves, some neckcloths, and some pomade for his hair were none of them really expensive, he had discovered, with a slight shock, that when added together they reached rather an alarming total.
There was also his bill at the inn to be taken into account, but since this had not so far been presented he was able to relegate it to the very back of his mind.