misses--curse me, no! She's all fire and blood and high mettle--a
woman, sir glorious--divine--damme, sir, a black-browed goddess--a
positive plum!"

"Sir Richard," said I, "should I ever contemplate marriage, which
is most improbable, my wife must be sweet and shy, gentle-eyed and
soft of voice, instead of your bold, strong-armed, horse-galloping
creature; above all, she must be sweet and clinging--"

"Sweet and sticky, oh, the devil! Hark to the boy, Grainger,"
cried Sir Richard, "hark to him--and one glance of the glorious
Sefton's bright eyes--one glance only, Grainger, and he'd be at
her feet--on his knees--on his confounded knees, sir!"

"The question is, how do you propose to maintain yourself in the
future?" said Mr. Grainger at this point; "life under your altered
fortunes must prove necessarily hard, Mr. Peter."

"And yet, sir," I answered, "a fortune with a wife tagged on to
it must prove a very mixed blessing after all; and then again,
there may be a certain amount of satisfaction in stepping into a
dead man's shoes, but I, very foolishly, perhaps, have a hankering
for shoes of my own. Surely there must be some position in life
that I am competent to fill, some position that would maintain me
honorably and well; I flatter myself that my years at Oxford were
not altogether barren of result--"

"By no means," put in Sir Richard; "you won the High Jump,
I believe?"