Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/270

“ About half an hour after the young farmer awoke, and looking across the room saw that his friend Georgy had gone away in clothes which didn’t belong to him, and had kindly left for himself the aeedy ones worn by Georgy. At this he sat up in a deep thought for some time, instead of hastening to give an alarm. ‘The money, the money is gone,’ he said to himself, ‘and that’s bad. But se are the clothes,’

“He then looked upon the table and saw that the money, or most of it, had been left behind,

“ Ha, ha, ha!’ he cried, and began to dance about the room. ‘Ha, ha, haf he said again, and made beantiful smiles to himself in the shaving-glass and in the brass candlestick ; and then awang sbout his arms for all the world aa if he were going through the sword exercise.

“When he had dreseed himself in Georgy’s clothes and gone down-stairs, he did not seem to mind at all that they took him for the other; and even when he saw that he had been left a bad horse for a good one, he was not inclined to ery out, They told him his friend had paid the bill, at which he seemed much pleased, and without waiting for breakfast he mounted Georgy’s horse and rode away likewise, choosing the nearest by-lane in preference to the high-road, without knowing that Georgy had chosen that by-lane also.

“He had not trotted more than two miles in the personal character of Georgy Crockhill when, suddenly rounding a bend that the lane made thereabout, he came upon a man struggling in the hands of two village constables. It was his friend Georgy, the borrower of his clothes and horse. But so far was the young farmer from showing any alacrity in rushing forward to claim his property that he would have tarned the poor beast he rode into the wood adjoining, if he had not been already perceived.