.

"You were so good as to make an appointment with me, your honour," said
Margari cringingly.

"Yes, yes, I know, I know" (he was afraid to warn him of his danger,
with all the servants listening to them), "but I cannot spare the time
now, come some other day. I cannot give you anything here."

"But your honour was good enough to say that you had some glad tidings
to communicate."

"Another time, another time! I am very busy just now."

Mr. John would have shaken off Margari altogether, but Margari was not
so easily got rid of. He had already ascertained from the coachman that
Mr. John was off to Promontor and did not mean to return again in a
hurry, so he resolved to take his measures accordingly. He rushed
forward to open the carriage door, helped Mr. John to get into the
coach, wished him a most pleasant journey, no end of enjoyment and other
meaningless things, all of which made much the same agreeable impression
upon Mr. John as if an ant had crept into his boot and he could not kill
it because he was in company. Only when the carriage door was shut to
and he saw Margari's face no more did he begin to breathe freely again.

Margari however attributed this reception, or rather, non-reception, to
the capricious humours to which his honour was constantly liable without
rhyme or reason (it is a peculiarity of self-made plutocrats as
everybody knows); but he was not a bit offended,--he knew his place. His
honour doesn't want to see Margari just now, very well, he shall not see
him so he jumped up behind the carriage alongside the lacquey. But how
surprised his honour will be when he gets to Promontor to see Margari
open the carriage door for him? How he will bid him go to the devil and
immediately after burst out laughing and give him a present! And what
will the present be? Has it anything to do with the good news with which
he meant to surprise him? And all the while, Mr. John, inside the
carriage was hugging himself with the idea that he had rid himself of
Margari for a time and devoutly wishing that the cholera, or some other
equally rapid and effectual disease, might remove the old rascal off the
face of the earth altogether.

When the carriage stopped at the picturesque vineyards of Promontor, Mr.
John almost had a stroke when, on looking through the glass window, the
first feature of the panorama that presented itself was the figure of
Margari, hastening to open the door with obsequious familiarity.

"Y