Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/117

warnings of the modern seer, and his dark vistas of starvation, crime, neglect, and discontent.

'Well,' he said to himself, as he closed the book, 'I suppose it is good for us easy-going ones now and then to face the possibility of a change. Gold has grown on my back as feathers do on geese, without my own will or deed; but considering that gold, like feathers, is equally useful to those who have and those who have not, why, it is worth while for the goose to remember that he may possibly one day be plucked. And what remains? 'Io,' as Medea says. . . . .But Argemone?' . . . . .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 felt student's 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?'