Haresfoot in hand, Jack met his admiring eyes in the glass, and laughed.

“I make no doubt you would.⁠ ⁠… I have cultivated a superb voice, a trifle thick and beery, a little loud, perhaps⁠—ah, something to dream of o’ nights! I doubt they do, too,” he added reflectively, and affixed the patch at the corner of his mouth.

“So? A little low, you think? But ’twill suffice⁠—What’s toward?”

Down below in the street there was a great stirring and bustling: horses’ hoofs, shouts from the ostlers, and the sound of wheels on the cobblestones. Jim went to the window and looked down, craning his neck to see over the balcony.

“ ’Tis a coach arrived, sir.”

“That much had I gathered,” replied my lord, busy with the powder.

“Yes, sir. O lord, sir!” He was shaken with laughter.