eep pigeons.

CHAPTER III

PETER LEATHER

Nothing bespeaks the character of a dealer's trade more than the servants
and hangers-on of the establishment. The civiler in manner, and the better
they are 'put on,' the higher the standing of the master, and the better
the stamp of the horses.

Those about Mr. Buckram's were of a very shady order. Dirty-shirted,
sloggering, baggy-breeched, slangey-gaitered fellows, with the word 'gin'
indelibly imprinted on their faces. Peter Leather, the head man, was one of
the fallen angels of servitude. He had once driven a duke--the Duke of
Dazzleton--having nothing whatever to do but dress himself and climb into
his well-indented richly fringed throne, with a helper at each horse's head
to 'let go' at a nod from his broad laced three-cornered hat. Then having
got in his cargo (or rubbish, as he used to call them), he would start off
at a pace that was truly terrific, cutting out this vehicle, shooting past
that, all but grazing a third, anathematizing the 'buses, and abusing the
draymen. We don't know how he might be with the queen, but he certainly
drove as though he thought nobody had any business in the street while the
Duchess of Dazzleton wanted it. The duchess liked going fast, and Peter
accommodated her. The duke jobbed his horses and didn't care about pace,
and so things might have gone on very comfortably, if Peter one afternoon
hadn't run his pole into the panel of a very plain but very neat yellow
barouche, passing the end of New Bond Street, which having nothing but a
simple crest--a stag's head on the panel--made him think it belonged to
some bulky cit, taking the air with his rib, but who, unfortunately, turned
out to be no less a person than Sir Giles Nabem, Knight, the great police
magistrate, upon one of whose myrmidons in plain clothes, who came to the
rescue, Peter committed a most violent assault, for which unlucky casualty
his worship furnished him with rotatory occupation for his fat calves in
the 'H. of C.,' as the clerk shortly designated the House of Correction.
Thither Peter went, and in lieu of his lace-bedaubed coat, gold-gartered
plushes, stockings, and buckled shoes, he was dressed up in a suit of
tight-fitting yellow and black-striped worsteds, that gave him the
appearance of a wasp without wings. Peter Leather then tumbled regularly
down the staircase of servitude, the greatness of his fall being
occasionally broken by landing in some inferior