'Not it,' said Dunstan. 'I'm always lucky in my weather. It might
rain if you wanted to go yourself. You never hold trumps, you know-
I always do. You've got the beauty, you see, and I've got the luck, so
you must keep me by you for your crooked sixpence; you'll ne-ver get
along without me.'
'Confound you, hold your tongue,' said Godfrey, impetuously. 'And
take care to keep sober tomorrow, else you'll get pitched on your head
coming home, and Wildfire might be the worse for it.'
'Make your tender heart easy,' said Dunstan, opening the door. 'You
never knew me see double when I'd got a bargain to make; it 'ud
spoil the fun. Besides, whenever I fall, I'm warranted to fall on my
legs.'
With that, Dunstan slammed the door behind him, and left Godfrey to
that bitter rumination on his personal circumstances which was now
unbroken from day to day save by the excitement of sporting, drinking,
card-playing, or the rarer and less oblivious pleasure of seeing
Miss Nancy Lammeter. The subtle and varied pains springing from the
higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less
pitiable than that dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and
consolation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent
companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The lives of
those rural forefathers, whom we are apt to think very prosaic
figures- men whose only work was to ride round their land, getting
heavier and heavier in their saddles, and who passed the rest of their
days in the half-listless gratification of senses dulled by
monotony- had a certain pathos in them nevertheless.
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