Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/160

140 meaning of all this, and what game you chaps are up to."

"Pray don't agitate yourself," said the gentleman in spectacles; "it is only a drive to do you good."

But Mr. Bouncer could not see the transaction in this light, and did not approve of being rapidly whirled away, a captive in the old bald-pate's car, sitting knee to knee with a burly individual who appeared to be prepared to pounce upon him if he gave the slightest evidence of attempting resistance or escape. What would the three inmates of the car have felt, or said, had they known that young Mr. Winstanley had watched the whole scene of Mr. Bouncer's abduction, and, from his covert of shrubs in the plantation, was, even then, chuckling with joy as he gazed upon the lessening shape of the four-wheeled chaise as it grew smaller in the distance, until a bend in the road removed it out of sight! When he had witnessed this, young Winstanley executed a species of wild fandango, as a pas d'extase, expressive of his unbounded satisfaction at what he had seen; and then leaving the covert of the box and berberis and laurels that composed the undergrowth of the plantation, calmed his outward deportment to its ordinary seeming, and returned, placidly, across the small park to the Woodlands.

When he got there, he said to the footman, "Has the gentleman gone?"

"Dr. Dustacre, sir?"

Young Winstanley nodded an affirmative.

"Yes, sir; he let himself out, sir. Leastways, I suppose Mr. Bouncer let him out; for I saw them walking towards the lodge together. That was more than a quarter of an hour ago."