Hugh!--a dreadful idle vagrant fellow, sir, half
a gipsy, as I think--always sleeping in the sun in summer, and in
the straw in winter time, sir--Hugh! Dear Lord, to keep a gentleman
a waiting here through him!--Hugh! I wish that chap was dead, I do
indeed.'
'Possibly he is,' returned the other. 'I should think if he were living,
he would have heard you by this time.'
'In his fits of laziness, he sleeps so desperate hard,' said the
distracted host, 'that if you were to fire off cannon-balls into his
ears, it wouldn't wake him, sir.'
The guest made no remark upon this novel cure for drowsiness, and recipe
for making people lively, but, with his hands clasped behind him, stood
in the porch, very much amused to see old John, with the bridle in his
hand, wavering between a strong impulse to abandon the animal to his
fate, and a half disposition to lead him into the house, and shut him up
in the parlour, while he waited on his master.
'Pillory the fellow, here he is at last!' cried John, in the very height
and zenith of his distress. 'Did you hear me a calling, villain?'
The figure he addressed made no answer, but putting his hand upon the
saddle, sprung into it at a bound, turned the horse's head towards the
stable, and was gone in an instant.
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