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I took care that, in about the middle of the distance, our race-ground should pass over where some rushes were growing. Now Riprapton had a most uncommon speed in this manner of progressing.
One leg marched and the other swam, in the prettiest semicircle imaginable. When he stopped, the flourish of the gyrator was ineffable. The drumstick in the hand of the big black drummer of the first regiment of foot-guards was nothing to it. Whenever Riprapton bowed and he was always bowing this flourish preluded and concluded the salutary bend. It was making a leg indeed.
My friend Riprapton had now the enviable task to impart to me the science of navigation; and, with his peculiar notions of longitude and latitude, there can be no question as to the merits of the tuition that I received from that very erudite person.
The mender of pens groaned in the spirit. "I say," said the school-boy wag of the party, applying an old Joe Miller to the occasion, "why is Mr Riprapton like pens, ink, and paper?" "Because he is stationary," vociferated five eager voices, at once, in reply.
Either this act emboldened Riprapton, or he egregiously mistook her character, and judged that a mere voluptuary stood before him, for he immediately went on the vacant side and endeavoured to possess himself of her hand. Face, neck, and arms flushed up, in one indignant crimson of the most unsophisticated anger I ever beheld.
Mr Riprapton, washed, brushed, and perfumed for the scholastic duties of the day were over was standing directly in front of us, enacting most laboriously the agreeable, smiling with a sardonic grin, and looking actually yellow with spite, in the midst of his complimentary grimaces.
"Come," thought I, "it's quite time, after that, for the honour of the academy, to beat a retreat, or we shall be beaten hollow by this heavy-shod clodpole. Mr Riprapton," said I, "I don't bear you any malice but I recollect my wager. If I extricate you out of the difficulty, will you own that I have won it?" "Gladly," said he, very sorrowfully.
"Ah, bah! c'est un veritable chevalier aux dames" said Monsieur Cherfeuil, and slamming to the door, he hurried downstairs to reclaim his too gallant representative. We allowed Mr Riprapton to inhabit for some time two floors at once, for he was, in his position, perfectly helpless; that admired living leg of his stretched out at its length upon the floor.
When Mrs Causand came to Stickenham, she made universal jubilee. The orderly routine of scholastic life had no longer place. She almost ruined Riprapton in clean linen, perfumes, and Windsor soap. Cards and music enlivened every evening; and the games she played were those of the fashion of the day, and she always played high, and always won. Her ascendancy over Mrs Cherfeuil was complete.
As Riprapton flourished his wooden index, in the midst of his brilliant peroration, he told the honest seaman that he had not a leg to stand upon; and all the ladies, and some of the gentlemen, too, cried out with one accord, "O fie, Captain Headman, now don't be so obstinate surely you are quite mistaken."
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