Page:Foreign Tales and Traditions (Volume 2).djvu/245

 On turning round towards the company on the green, I observed the little man’s family-circle closely engaged in earnest conversation; observing my eyes watching them they started from each other in some confusion, and I distinctly heard an elderly lady—whom I presumed to be the mother of the group—exclaim: “I could wager it is he!”—“We shall soon find that out,” added the supposed father of the group, steering across the road, with his long Dutch pipe in his mouth, straight towards my postillion.

Notwithstanding the solemnity of the feelings in which I had so recently been indulging, I could not help bursting out in a very hearty laugh when I observed the anxiety of the busy bustling old gentleman to search out the important truth respecting, as I presumed, my name and mission, from the lad at the horses; it was clear from the gestures of the latter that he knew nothing at all about me,—and, after a vacillating movement to right and left, the old gentleman wheeled directly in front of me, and bore down straight upon the object of his curiosity. I never beheld a more grotesque figure than that which now came waddling up to me; his face—which together with head and hat, might have been estimated at nearly four-fifths of the whole figure—bore a great resemblance to the full moon when glowing dusky red through the vapours of evening; his two ears—which were of portentous length—were joined to each other by his mouth; his nose was of dimensions proportionable to the face to which it belonged, but then it looked as if it had been crushed flat by the fall of a beer-tun upon it; his little peering eyes were almost concealed from observation by his distended cheeks, and overhanging eye-brows; and then the upper parts of this outrageously odd figure were enveloped in a huge grey and white coat of some light summer-stuff, while its legs were incased in white dimity-trowsers and Wellington boots.

“I beg pardon, sir,” growled the little figure as it rolled alongside of me,—“but I believe you are from the capital.”

I bowed assent, biting my lips cruelly to subdue a rising