.

.

And Lancelot felt, for the moment, as conservative as the tutelary genius of all special constables.
As the last thought passed through his brain, Bracebridge's little mustang slouched past the window, ridden (without a saddle) by a horseman whom there was no mistaking for no one but the immaculate colonel, the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, dared to go about the country 'such a figure.' A minute afterwards he walked in, in a student's felt hat, a ragged heather-coloured coatee, and old white 'regulation drills,' shrunk half-way up his legs, a pair of embroidered Indian mocassins, and an enormous meerschaum at his button-hole.
'Where have you been this last week ?' 'Over head and ears in Young England, till I fled to you for a week's common sense.

A glass of cider, for mercy's sake, "to take the taste of it out of my mouth," as Bill Sykes has it.' 'Where have you been staying ?' 'With young Lord Vieuxbois, among high art and painted glass, spade farms, and model smell-traps, rubricalities and sanitary reforms, and all other inventions, possible and impossible, for "stretching the old formula to meet the new fact," as your favourite prophet says.' 'Till the old formula cracks under the tension.' 'And cracks its devotees, too, I think.

Here comes the cider!' 'But, my dear fellow, you must not laugh at all this.