"And who is Jasper Gaunt?"
"Oh, delicious innocence! Ah, Bev! it's evident you are new to London.
Gaunt is an outcome of the City, as harsh and dingy as its bricks,
as flinty and hard as its pavements. Gad! most of our set know
Jasper Gaunt--to their cost! Who is Jasper Gaunt, you ask; well, my
dear fellow, question Slingsby of the Guards, he's getting deeper
every day, poor old Sling! Ask it, but in a whisper, at Almack's, or
White's, or Brooke's, and my Lord this, that, or t'other shall tell
you pat and to the point in no measured terms. Ask it of wretched
debtors in the prisons, of haggard toilers in the streets, of
pale-faced women and lonely widows, and they'll tell you, one and all,
that Jasper Gaunt is the harshest, most merciless bloodsucker that
ever battened and grew rich on the poverty and suffering of his
fellow men, and--oh here we are!"
Saying which, his Lordship abruptly turned down an unexpected and
very narrow side lane, where, screened behind three great trees, was
a small inn, or hedge tavern with a horse-trough before the door
and a sign whereon was the legend, "The Spotted Cow," with a
representation of that quadruped below, surely the very spottiest
of spotted cows that ever adorned an inn sign.
"Not much to look at, my dear Bev," said the Viscount, with a wave
of his hand towards the inn, "but it's kept by an old sailor, a
shipmate of the Bo'sun's. I can at least promise you a good breakfast,
and the ale you will find excellent. But first I want to show you a
very small demon of mine, a particularly diminutive fiend; follow me,
my dear fellow."
So, by devious ways, the Viscount led Barnabas round to the back of
the inn, and across a yard to where, beyond a gate, was a rick-yard,
and beyond that again, a small field or paddock. Now, within this
paddock, the admired of a group of gaping rustics, was the very
smallest groom Barnabas had ever beheld, for, from the crown of his
leather postilion's hat to the soles of his small top boots, he
could not have measured more than four feet at the very most.
"There he is, Bev, behold him!" said the Viscount, with his
whimsical smile, "the very smallest fiend, the most diminutive demon
that ever wore top boots!"
The small groom was engaged in walking a fine blood horse up and
down the paddock, or rather the horse was walking the groom, for
the animal being very tall and powerful and much given to divers
startings, snortings, and tossings of the head, it thus befell that
to every step the diminutive groom marched on terra firma, he took
one in mid-air, at which times, swinging pendulum-like, he poured
forth a stream of invective that the most experienced ostler, guard,
or coachman might well have envied, and all in a voice so gruff, so
hoarse and guttural, despite his tender years, as filled the
listening rustics with much apparent awe and wonder.