Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

FATHER TIERNAY'S OPINION ABOUT THE FAMILY. 79
The physical appearance of Mr. Dickson was as though you
had taken an aged Newmmarket jockey, and put a barrel of oysters, barrel and all, inside his waistcoat. His face was thin; his
thighs were hollow; calves to his legs he had none. He was all
stomach. Many years had elapsed since he had been brought to
the verge of dissolution by severe training; and since then all he
had eaten or drunk or done had flown to his stomach, producing
a tympanitic action in that organ astounding to behold. In speech
he was, towards his superiors, courteous and polite; towards his
equals, dictatorial; towards his subordinates, abusive, not to say
blasphemous. To this gentleman Charles addressed himself;
inquiring if he had seen William; and he, with a lofty, though
courteous, sense of injury, inquired, in a loud tone of voice, of
the stable-men generally, if any one had seen Mr. Charles's padgroom.
In a dead silence which ensued, one of the lads was ill-advised
enough to say that he did n't exactly know where he was; which
caused Mr. Dickson to remark that, if that was all he had to say,
he had better go on with his work, and not make a fool of himself, - which the man did, growling out something about always
putting his foot in it.
"Your groom comes and goes pretty much as he likes, sir," said
Mr. Dickson. "I don't consider him as under my orders. Had
he been so, I should have felt it my duty to make complaint on.
more than one occasion, - he is a little too much of the gentleman for my stable, sir."
" Of course, my good Dickson," interrupted Charles, " the fact
of his being my favorite makes you madly jealous of him; that
is not the question now. If you don't know where he is, be so
good as to hold your tongue."
Charles was only now and then insolent and abrupt with servants, and they liked him the better for it. It was one of Cuthbert's rules to be coldly, evenly polite, and, as he thought, considerate to the whole household; and yet they did not like him half
so well as Charles, who would sometimes, when anything went
wrong, "kick up " what an intelligent young Irish footman used
to call "the divvle's own shindy." Cuthbert, they knew, had no
sympathy for them, but treated them, as he treated himself, as
mere machines; while Charles had that infinite capacity of goodwill which -none are more quick to recognize than servants and
laboring people. And on this occasion, though Mr. Dickson
might have sworn a little more than usual after Charles's departure, yet his feeling, on the whole, was, that he was sorry for
having vexed the young gentleman by sneering at his favorite.
But Charles, having rescued the enraptured father Tiernay
from the stable, and having listened somewhat inattentively to a