Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/68

 48 achieved, — not without some suffering of the hero, or it would not have been worth recording." On that expedition, each night that he stopped at an inn, the landlord, " put me into a common room, with my brethren of the bag, who (as these fellows have all their walks like the cock-robins, and are as jealous of interference,) were presently solicitous to know what I dealt in ; — " a very light commodity," was the answer; which was repeated until it grew stale to myself, and which produced many ingenious guesses : but with the dark saying I was obliged to give the interpretation, and tell them I meant words, which, as they found I was no com- petitor, was a good joke, and we sat down very sociably, and settled the affairs of the nation." He had his joke on his arrival. He came to Scrivelsby on a Friday evening. " Why ! because I know it is a trick of my old friends the neighbouring parsons, to hold a convocation on Saturdays, —as we shall do to-morrow, — and then for whist, back- gammon, and tobacco, till we can't see, hear, or speak ! By this trick of their's hangs a tolerable tale. Roger the servant of one of them, who is not remarkable for the happiest enunciation, asked Humphrey, the servant of another, what the deuce could be the meaning that their masters met so on Saturdays, of all days? "Why! what do'st think, fool," cried Numps, archly, " but to change sarmunts among one another ? " " Neay, then," said Roger, " I'm zure as how they uses my measter very badly, for he always has the worst." Another visit was to Blundeston in Suffolk, pre- sumably to Blundeston House, at that time occupied by Norton Nicholls, the friend of Gray. Warner would find in him a parson of congenial habits and a fellow-traveller who had seen many cities. The house and grounds formed one of the chief interests in the life of Nicholls, and to their beauti- fying he devoted his time and his money. (George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, by J. H. Jesse, 1844, IV., pp. 244-6.)