remained with him as he rode home.

Lady Blandish's tender womanly intuition bade her say: "You see it was
the very thing he wanted. He has got his natural spirits already."

"It was," Adrian put in his word, "the exact thing he wanted. His
spirits have returned miraculously."

"Something amused him," said the baronet, with an eye on the puffing
train.

"Probably something his uncle said or did," Lady Blandish suggested, and
led off at a gallop.

Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for Richard's
laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding the carriage-door closed
on him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope which dwells
in Change; for one who does not woo her too frequently; and to express
his sudden relief from mental despondency at the amorous prospect, the
Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub between his legs: which
unlucky action brought Adrian's pastoral,

"Hippy verteth,
Sing cuckoo!"

in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter seized
him.

"Hippy verteth!"