Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/45

Rh coloured hunting scenes, and Landseer's animals, and pretty feminine inanities, all in elegant gilt frames, from Ryman's or Wyatt's; and there were handscreens and fancy articles in papier maché, on which the artists of Messrs. Spiers and Son had drawn the glories of Oxford from their most picturesque points of view; and there were Parian statuettes, and vases, and china; and there were handsomely-bound volumes on rows of oaken book-shelves; and there were two or three pairs of antlers (convenient for the support of riding-whips, walking-sticks, and such like), the owners of which had fallen to Mr. Blucher Boots' unerring rifle, at Glenslipper, his father's shooting-box in Perthshire.

The furniture of the room was an evidence that the occupant was a person of æsthetical tastes; and that he was either wealthy or was in a position to obtain unlimited credit for the various articles that he had gathered around him. If the son of a Commoner has facilities for doing so, the son of a Peer finds himself indulged to an extent that is seductive and dangerous; and Oxford tradesmen are almost the last persons who should be blamed for the evils of the credit system. Very often they themselves are the sufferers, and find that they have fallen victims to one who is, legally, "an infant."

The Hon. Blucher Boots himself was one of these legal infants, and, physically speaking, was a tolerably fine specimen of the infant race. When, in compliance with his call "Come in!" little Mr. Bouncer entered his room, he was sitting in one of his numerous easy-chairs, "in gorgeous array," like Villikins' Dinah, with a scarlet Turkish fez on his head, and a crimson-and-blue-striped dressing-gown belted round his waist, the while he smoked a short black pipe and consulted a "Racing