, and the crudeness of his experience,
Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr. Stirn would address
to him some words in approbation of his gallantly, and in sympathy for
his bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken. That truly great
man, worthy prime-minister of Hazeldean, might, perhaps, pardon a
dereliction from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to
the interests of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief;
but he was inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences--an
ill-timed, stupid, over-zealous obedience to orders, which, if it
established the devotion of the _employe_, got the employer into what is
popularly called a scrape! And though, by those unversed in the
intricacies of the human heart, and unacquainted with the especial
hearts of prime-ministers and right-hand men, it might have seemed
natural that Mr. Stirn, as he stood still, hat in hand, in the middle of
the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by the mortification he had
received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would have felt that that young
gentleman was the proper object of his resentment; yet such a breach of
all the etiquette of diplomatic life as resentment towards a superior
power was the last idea that would have suggested itself to the profound
intellect of the Premier of Hazeldean. Still, as rage, like steam, must
escape somewhere, Mr. Stirn, on feeling--as he afterwards expressed it
to his wife--that his "buzzom was a burstin," turned with the natural
instinct of self-preservation to the safety-valve provided for the
explosion; and the vapors within him rushed into vent upon Lenny
Fairfield. He clapped his hat on his head fiercely, and thus relieved
his "buzzom."

"You young willain! you howdacious wiper! and so all this blessed
Sabbath afternoon, when you ought to have been in church on your marrow
bones, a-praying for your betters, you has been a-fitting with a young
gentleman, and a wisiter to your master, on the werry place of the
parridge hinstitution that you was to guard and pertect; and a-bloodying
it all over, I declares, with your blaggard little nose!" Thus saying,
and as if to mend the matter, Mr. Stirn aimed an additional stroke at
the offending member; but, Lenny mechanically putting up both his arms
to defend his face, Mr. Stirn struck his knuckles against the large
brass buttons that adorned the cuff of the boy's coat-sleeve--an
incident which greatly aggravated his indignatio