CHAPTER IV

THE LAD WE LEFT BEHIND

THE wholesome maxim, that “it is well to be off with the old love before we are on with the new,” applying to a certain extent to the fair as well as to the ruder sex, we may here say a few words about our hero No. 1, ere we bring No. 2 upon the tapis. Jasper Goldspink, if not a smart youth, had some very excellent attributes. He was the son of a rich banker, and it is remarkable, that though people will abuse most other callings, it is a rare thing to hear any one say a word against a banker, simply, we suppose, because abusing a banker would be symptomatic of having been refused a loan. Jasper therefore was a very great man in the country, and only required the aid of Lady Airyworth, Lady Plumage, or some other great leader of fashion, to make him pass muster in town. It is singular how people worship wealth even though there is no chance of getting any of it themselves. If Jasper hadn’t been rich, or on the highway to riches, such an ordinary every-day looking youth would never have attracted attention at all; as it was, people winked and nudged each other as he passed, and said, “Oh, that will be a rich man !” or, “Oh, what a sight of money that man will have !” He walked the streets with a strut and a stare, that as good as said, “I’ll be a deal richer than you.” Old Goldspink was one of the cautious money-scraping order of bankers, as contra-distinguished to the go-ahead Scotch school, who run a-muck at everything. He thought of nothing but money, revolving a thing over in his mind many times before he did it, always in a doubtful point calling in the aid of figures, beginning with his favourite apophthegm of sivin and four being elivin, and so piling up numbers until he arrived at a satisfactory solution of the mystery. Thus, for instance, if he saw Mr. Cordey Brown, the butcher, stealing out of town, with his spurs in his hat, concealing, as he thought, his hunting apparel under his olive-coloured Macintosh, he would immediately begin, “sivin and four’s elivin, and eighteen, is twenty-nine—there’s that Cordey Brown going out hunting again—and eight is thirty-sivin—much better be taking up Willowedge and Co.’s overdue bill, than breaking peop’e’s hedges scrambling after Jonathan Jobling’s harriers—and fourteen is fifty-one—Jonathan will be coming to grief himself some day, see his name to a great deal of very suspicious paper—and sivin is fifty-eight—take care he don’t do me”—with which wise resolution he would dive his hands into the depths of his capacious trowser pockets and begin his sivin-and-four calculations upon somebody else. Not that old Goldspink altogether disapproved of hunting, for at the instigation of his ambitious wife, he had bought our hero No. 1 what he called “a pair of hunting horses,” to enable him to follow the chase with his noble but sadly overdrawing customer, the Duke of Tergiversation’s foxhounds; but our young friend, after two or three spread-eagleings on his back, became so disgusted with a sharpish switch across the bridge of his nose from the return branch of an ash tree, that he gladly took advantage of a temporary ailment to one of his horse’s “back legs,” to withdraw from the chase, and at the period of our story was turning his attention to what he considered the more profitable occupation of the Turf. As we shall presently have him down at Roseberry Rocks Races, we will defer a further description of his person until he comes; it being evident that a man’s looks depend very much upon what he puts on, just as a lady is one person in a bonnet, and another in a riding-hat. We will, therefore, now return to the Rocks, and amuse ourselves there as best we can, till Jasper arrives.