Willoughby, who was travelling loose with Thompson and Cooper, was a whaler.
Not owing to any inherent incapacity, for he had taken his B.A.
at an English university, and was, notwithstanding his rags and dirt,
a remarkably fine-looking man; bearing a striking resemblance to Dixon,
even in features. But as the wives of Napoleon's generals could never learn
to walk on a carpet, so the aimless popinjay of adult age can never learn
to take a man's place among rough-and-ready workers. Even in spite of
Willoughby's personal resemblance to Dixon, there was a suggestion
of latent physical force and leathery durability in the bullock driver,
altogether lacking in the whaler, and equiponderated only by a certain air
of refinement. How could it be otherwise? Willoughby, of course,
had no horse--in fact, like Bassanio, all the wealth he had ran in his veins;
he was a gentleman. Well for the world if all representatives of his Order
were as harmless, as inexpensive, and as unobtrusive as this poor fellow,
now situated like that most capricious poet, honest Ovid, among the Goths.

One generally feels a sort of diffidence in introducing one's self;
but I may remark that I was at that time a Government official,
of the ninth class; paid rather according to my grade than my merit,
and not by any means in proportion to the loafing I had to do.
Candidly, I was only a Deputy-Assistant-Sub-Inspector,
but with the reversion of the Assistant-Sub-Inspectorship itself
when it should please Atropos to snip the thread of my superior officer.

The repast being concluded, the drivers went into committee
on the subject of grass--a vital question in '83, as you may remember.

"It's this way," said Mosey imperatively, and deftly weaving into his address
the thin red line of puissant adjective; "You dunno what you're doin'