THE GROOJNl 145 



fully well-brushed hats, nasty frowsey tartan neckcloths, long 

 ditto waistcoats, white-seamed, button-covered, greasy-collared 

 dark coats, stained drabs with tarnished knee buttons, patched 

 boots with sloggering caps, the whole set off with a pair of 

 baggy Berlin gloves. 



This old boy, blue and all blue, with the tarnished band 

 on the greasy hat, is Cottonwool's coachman. What he has 

 come out for nobody knows, unless Henrietta has sent him to 

 look after Smashgate. Ah, see how old Blue Bluey greets 

 the baronet's groom ! There's a wring of the hand that looks 

 like business. Trust a servant for smelling a rat ! They are 

 at once the best-informed and worst-informed people under 

 the sun. They know everything and nothing — everything in 

 the hall, nothing in the parlour. Who would have thought 

 to see such a swell-consequential-looking man-gentleman, we 

 might say — with white cords and basket buttons on his brown 

 cut-away, doing the familiar with such a tawdry, dirt3'-clothes- 

 bag-looking old file as that coachman — a man whose boots 

 have evidently belonged to his predecessor, and whose plush 

 breeches would hold two pair of such legs as his ? Never- 

 theless there they greet. " Well, Matthew." " Well, Mr. 

 Thomas." Not that Mr. Thomas thinks Henrietta by any 

 means a match for his master ; but Mr. Thomas having cast a 

 favourable eye on the joint-stock lady's maid at Fleecy Hall, 

 who, according to the usual etiquette of servitude, will accom- 

 pany the first married " Miss," Mr. Thomas thinks it well to 

 favour the suit. What with this double pull upon him, it will 

 be odd if the baronet is not caught. 



But enough for this paper is the scribblement thereof. If 

 this lecture on Grooms should cause one untidy dog to survey 

 himself in the limpid stream and amend his ways, one silly 

 lad to give over considering whether this or that is "his work," 

 one thoughtless master to pause ere he throws a servant into 



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