A good rubbing down, indeed, for Spec and Shat that night, and a well-filled manger, too. When Jim picked up his stable-lantern, he gave each horse a pat on the head and a parting hug, and then backed out, with his eyes still on them. "Spec!" said he at the door. Spec gave a whinny in reply. "Shat!" Shat responded also. "Good-night, old boys! Old Jim aint a-goin' to lay no whip onto you. If old Jim wants to lay a whip onto something, it wo n't be onto you, that 's been spavined and had the bots, and he 's cured 'em, and they know it, hey! No, Sir. His 'tipathy works outside into another quarter. Is my name James? Well, it aint. It's Jim, is n't it? Yes, Sir!"
Old Jim's remarks being ended, and the stable-door locked, nothing remained for him to do but to form the glacis before the Belgrave citadel.
From that night, however, the halcyon days of Spec and Shat were at an end. The Mewkers loved to ride, but they had no horses: the only living thing standing upon four legs belonging to Mr. Mewker was an ugly, half-starved, cross-grained, suspicious-looking dog, that had the mange and a bad reputation. Of course, the Captain's horses were at their service, for rides to the beach, for pic-nics in the woods, for shopping in the village, or, perchance, to take Mr. Mewker to some distant church-meeting. And not only were the horses absent at unusual times; there seemed to be a growing fondness in the Captain for late hours. The old-style regularity of the Oakery, the time-honored habits of early hours to bed, the usual procession up the stairs, formal but cheerful, were, in some measure, broken into; not but what these were observed as formerly; not but what every member of the family waited and watched until the Captain returned, no matter how late; but that sympathetic feeling which all had felt when the hour of bed-time came, had ceased to be, and in its place was the dreary languor, the tiresome, tedious feeling that those experience who sit up and wait and wait, for an absent one, waiting and asking, "Why tarry the wheels of his chariot?" There was an increasing presentiment, a gloomy foreshadowing of evil, in Miss Augusta's mind at these doings of the Captain; and this feeling was heightened by something, trifling in itself, yet still mysterious and unaccountable.
