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Clad in a sheepskin coat, with great jack-boots flapping above his knees, the prince spent all his days on horseback, riding from house to house, giving a little money and a good deal of sound and practical advice, listening to the old, old stories of undrained land and poor crops, of bad seed and broken tools; and cheering the tellers with his great laugh and some small witticism.
A modern mansion stands, with its broad sweep up to the wide door, like its hospitable owner in full dress and broad-bosomed shirt on his own hearth-rug: this ancient house stood with its back to the world, like one of its ancient owners, ready to ride, in morion, breast-plate, and jack-boots yet not armed cap-a-pie, not like a walled castle, that is.
The speaker was leaning against the open door of the cafe; a tall, lightly built man, dressed in a velvet shooting tunic, much the worse for wind and weather, a loose shirt, and jack-boots splashed and worn out. "When we are at it, monsieur," returned the Chasseur. "I only wish we had more." "Of course. Are you in need of recruits?"
Travelers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashers, in the shabby "vettura," and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tightest possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots.
And it was, for the moment, in vain that he reminded himself that most of them were of full as lowly origin as he; that few indeed could claim to be more than one generation removed from jack-boots and jeans; that the most elegant had more relations among the "vulgar herd" than they had among the "high folks." "What are you looking so glum and sour about?" asked Arkwright. He startled guiltily.
Thigh-pieces of steel, then termed taslets, met the tops of his huge jack-boots, and completed the equipage of a well-armed trooper of the period. The appearance of the horseman himself corresponded well with his military equipage, to which he had the air of having been long inured.
Behind Frank came Major Flinders, clean shaved, and with jack-boots and regimental coat restored to something like their pristine splendour: by his side rode another lady, the Señorita Carlota, Juana's aunt, somewhere about thirty years old, plump and merry, her upper lip fringed at the corners with a line of dark down, quite decided enough for a cornet of eighteen to be proud of a feminine embellishment too common for remark in these southern regions, and, in the opinion of some connoisseurs, rather enhancing the beauty of the fair wearers.
Seven out of the eight seemed to tumble in all at once, pushing against one another in their eagerness to enter, laughing, shouting, and stamping with the heels of their jack-boots on the bright red pantiles of the hall.
On a pair of short, stout legs he wore immense jack-boots, his Herculean shoulders and chest were adorned with a leathern doublet, and in the belt round his waist were conspicuously stuck a pair of pistols and a dagger. Altogether, a more ugly or sinister gentleman of his inches it would have been hard to find in all broad England.
When his early credulity was disturbed, and his saints and virgins taken out of his worship, to rank little higher than the divinities of Olympus, his belief became acquiescence rather than ardor; and he made his mind up to assume the cassock and bands, as another man does to wear a breastplate and jack-boots, or to mount a merchant's desk, for a livelihood, and from obedience and necessity, rather than from choice.
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