In which an Entirely New, And, as Will Be Seen Hereafter, a Most Important Character is Introduced.

The servants, I mean the stable-servants, who lived in the mews where Charles did, had a club; and, a night or two after he had seen Mary in the square, he was elected a member of it. The duke’s coachman, a wiry, grey, stern-looking, elderly man, waited upon him and informed him of the fact. He said that such a course was very unusual — in fact, without precedent. Men, he said, were seldom elected to the club until they were known to have been in good service for some years; but he (coachman) had the ear of the club pretty much, and had brought him in triumphant. He added that he could see through a brick wall as well as most men, and that, when he see a gentleman dressed in a livery, moping and brooding about the mews, he had said to himself that he wanted a little company, such as it was, to cheer him up, and so he had requested the club, &c.; and the club had done as he told them,

“Now, this is confoundedly kind of you,” said Charles; “but I am not a gentleman; I am a game-keeper’s son.”

“I suppose you can read Greek, now, can’t you?” said the coachman.

Charles was obliged to confess he could.

“Of course,” said the coachman; “all gamekeepers’ sons is forced to learn Greek, in order as they may slang the poachers in an unknown tongue. Fiddle-de-dee! I know all about it; leastwise, guess. Come along with me; why, I’ve got sous as old as you. Come along.”

“Are they in service?” said Charles, by way of something to say.

“Two of ’em are, but one’s in the army.”

“Indeed!” said Charles, with more interest.

“Ay; he is in your governor’s regiment.”

“Does he like it?” said Charles. “I should like to know him.”

“Like it? — don’t he?” said the coachman. “See what society he gets into. I suppose there ain’t no gentlemen’s sons troopers in that regiment, eh? Oh dear no. Don’t for a moment suppose it, young man. Not at all.”

Charles was very much interested by this news. He made up his mind there and then that he would enlist immediately. But he didn’t; he only thought about it.

Charles found that the club was composed of about a dozen coachmen and superior pad-grooms. They were very civil to him, and to one another. There was nothing to laugh at. There was nothing that could be tortured into ridicule. They talked about their horses and their business quite naturally. There was an air of kindly fellowship, and a desire for mutual assistance among them, which, at times, Charles had not noticed at the university. One man sang a song, and sang it very prettily too, about stag-hunting. He had got as far as —

“As every breath with sobs he drew,

The labouring buck strained full in view,”

when the door opened, and an oldish groom came in.

The song was not much attended to now. When the singer had finished, the others applauded him, but impatiently; and then there was a general exclamation of “Well?”

“I’ve just come down from the corner. There has been a regular run against Haphazard, and no one knows why. Something wrong with the horse, I suppose, because there’s been no run on any other in particular, only against him.”

“Was Lord Ascot there?” said some one.

-’ Ah, that he was. Wouldn’t bet, though, even at the long odds. Said he’d got every sixpence he was worth on the horse, and would stand where he was; and that’s true, they say. And master says, likewise, that Lord Welter would have taken ’em, but that his father stopped him.”

“That looks queerish,” said some one else.

“Ay, and wasn’t there a jolly row, too?”

“Who with?” asked several.

“Lord Welter and Lord Hainault. It happened outside, close to me. Lord Hainault was walking across the yard, and Lord Welter came up to him and said, ‘How d’ye do, Hainault?’ and Lord Hainault turned round and said, quite quiet, ‘Welter, you are a scoundrel! ‘ And Lord Welter said, ‘ Hainault, you are out of your senses; ‘ but he turned pale, too, and he looked — Lord! I shouldn’t like to have been before him — and Lord Hainault says, ‘ You know what I mean; ’ and Lord Welter says, ‘ No, I don’t; but, by Gad, you shall tell me; ‘ and then the other says, as steady as a rock, ‘ I’ll tell you. You are a man that one daren’t leave a woman alone with. Where’s that Casterton girl? Where’s Adelaide Summers? Neither a friend’s house, nor your own father’s house, is any protection for a woman against you.’ ‘Gad,’ says Lord Welter, ‘ You were pretty sweet on the last-named yourself, once on a time.’ ”

“Well!” said some one, “and what did Lord Hainault say?”

“He said, ‘You are a liar and a scoundrel, Welter.’ And then Lord Welter came at him; but Lord Ascot came between them, shaking like anything, and says he, ‘Hainault, go away, for God’s sake; you don’t know what you are saying. — Welter, be silent.’ But they made no more of he than —” (here our friend as at a loss for a simile).

“But how did it end?” asked Charles.

“Well,” said the speaker, “General Mainwaring came up, and laid his hand on Lord Welter’s shoulder, and took him off pretty quiet. And that’s all I know about it.”

It was clearly all. Charles rose to go, and walked hy himself from street to street, thinking.

Suppose he was to be thrown against Lord Welter, how should he act? what should he say? Truly it was a puzzling question. The anomaly of his position was never put before him more strikingly than now. What could he say? what could he do?

After the first shock, the thought of Adelaide’s unfaithfulness was not so terrible as on the first day or two; many little unamiable traits of character, vanity, selfishness, and so on, unnoticed before, began to come forth in somewhat startling relief., Anger, indignation, and love, all three jumbled up together, each one by turns in the ascendant, were the frames of mind in which Charles found himself when he began thinking about her. One moment he was saying to himself, “How beautiful she was!” and the next, “She was as treacherous as a tiger; she never could have cared for me.” But, when he came to think of Welter, his anger overmastered everything, and he would clench his teeth as he walked along, and for a few moments feel the blood rushing to his head and singing in his ears. Let us hope that Lord Welter will not come across him while he is in that mood, or there will be mischief

But his anger was soon over. He had just had one of these fits of anger as he walked along; and he was, like a good fellow, trying to conquer it, by thinking of Lord Welter as he was as a boy, and before he was a villain, when he came before St. Peter’s Church, in Eaton Square, and stopped to look at some fine horses which were coming out of Salter’s.

At the east end of St. Peter’s Church there is a piece of bare white wall in a corner, and in front of the wall was a little shoeblack.

He was not one of the regular brigade, with a red shirt, but an “Arab” of the first water. He might have been seven or eight years old, but was small. His whole dress consisted of two garments; a ragged shirt, with no buttons, and half of one sleeve gone, and a ragged pair of trousers, which, small as he was, were too small for him, and barely reached below his knees. His feet and head were bare: and under a vivid, tangled shock of hair looked a pretty, dirty, roguish face, with a pair of grey, twinkling eyes, which was amazingly comical. Charles stopped, watching him, and, as he did so, felt what we have most of us felt, I dare say — that, at certain times of vexation and anger, the company and conversation of children is the best thing for us.

The little man was playing at fives against the bare wall, with such tremendous energy — that he did not notice that Charles had stopped and was looking at him. Every nerve in his wiry lean little body was braced up to the game; his heart and soul were as eeply enlisted in it, as though he were captain of the eleven, or stroke of the eight.

He had no ball to play with, but he played with a brass button. The button flew hither and thither, being so irregular in shape, and the boy dashed after it like lightning. At last, after he had kept up five-and-twenty or so, the button flew over his head and lighted at Charles’s feet.

As the boy turned to get it, his eyes met Charles’s, and he stopped, parting the long hair from his forehead, and gazing on him till the beautiful little face, beautiful through dirt and ignorance and neglect, lit up with a smile, as Charles looked at him, with the kind, honest old expression. And so began their acquaintance, almost comically at first.

Charles don’t care to talk much about that boy now. If he ever does, it is to recall his comical humorous sayings and doings in the first part of their strange friendship. He never speaks of the end, even to me.

The boy stood smiling at him, as I said, holding his long hair out of his eyes; and Charles looked on him and laughed, and forgot all about Welter and the rest of them at once.

“I want my boots cleaned,” he said.

The boy said, “I can’t clean they dratted top-boots. I cleaned a groom’s boots a Toosday, and he punched my block because I blac............