LITMIR.BIZ

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till he whispered it to Captain Glomax.

      In the meantime there was a crowd in the road waiting to see the result of Tony's manœuvres. And then, as is usual on such occasions, a little mild repartee went about—what the sportsmen themselves would have called "chaff." Ned Botsey came up, not having broken his horse's back as had been rumoured, but having had to drag the brute out of the brook with the help of two countrymen, and the Major was asked about his fall till he was forced to open his mouth. "Double ditch;—mare fell;—matter of course." And then he got himself out of the crowd, disgusted with the littleness of mankind. Lord Rufford had been riding a very big chestnut horse, and had watched the anxious struggles of Kate Masters to hold her place. Kate, though fifteen, and quite up to that age in intelligence and impudence, was small and looked almost a child. "That's a nice pony of yours, my dear," said the Lord. Kate, who didn't quite like being called "my dear," but who knew that a lord has privileges, said that it was a very good pony. "Suppose we change," said his lordship. "Could you ride my horse?" "He's very big," said Kate. "You'd look like a tom-tit on a haystack," said his lordship. "And if you got on my pony, you'd look like a haystack on a tom-tit," said Kate. Then it was felt that Kate Masters had had the best of that little encounter. "Yes;—I got one there," said Lord Rufford, while his friends were laughing at him.

      At length Captain Glomax was seen in the road and Tony was with him at once, whispering in his ear that the hounds if allowed to go on would certainly run into Dillsborough Wood. "D—— the hounds," muttered the Captain; but he knew too well what he was about to face—so terrible a danger. "They're going home," he said as soon as he had joined Lord Rufford and the crowd.

      "Going home!" exclaimed a pink-coated young rider of a hired horse which had been going well with him; and as he said so he looked at his watch.

      "Unless you particularly wish me to take the hounds to some covert twenty miles off," answered the sarcastic Master.

      "The fox certainly went on to Littleton," said the elder Botsey.

      "My dear fellow," said the Captain, "I can tell you where the fox went quite as well as you can tell me. Do allow a man to know what he's about some times."

      "It isn't generally the custom here to take the hounds off a running fox," continued Botsey, who subscribed £50, and did not like being snubbed.

      "And it isn't generally the custom to have fox-coverts poisoned," said the Captain, assuming to himself the credit due to Tony's sagacity. "If you wish to be Master of these hounds I haven't the slightest objection, but while I'm responsible you must allow me to do my work according to my own judgment." Then the thing was understood and Captain Glomax was allowed to carry off the hounds and his ill-humour without another word.

      But just at that moment, while the hounds and the master, and Lord Rufford and his friends, were turning back in their own direction, John Morton came up with his carriage and the Senator. "Is it all over?" asked the Senator.

      "All over for to-day," said Lord Rufford.

      "Did you catch the animal?"

      "No, Mr. Gotobed; we couldn't catch him. To tell the truth we didn't try; but we had a nice little skurry for four or five miles."

      "Some of you look very wet." Captain Glomax and Ned Botsey were standing near the carriage; but the Captain as soon as he heard this, broke into a trot and followed the hounds.

      "Some of us are very wet," said Ned. "That's part of the fun."

      "Oh;—that's part of the fun. You found one fox dead and you didn't kill another because you didn't try. Well; Mr. Morton, I don't think I shall take to fox hunting even though they should introduce it in Mickewa. What's become of the rest of the men?"

      "Most of them are in the brook," said Ned Botsey as he rode on towards Dillsborough.

      Mr. Runciman was also there and trotted on homewards with Botsey, Larry, and Kate Masters. "I think I've won my bet," said the hotel-keeper.

      "I don't see that at all. We didn't find in Dillsborough Wood."

      "I say we did find in Dillsborough Wood. We found a fox though unfortunately the poor brute was dead."

      "The bet's off I should say. What do you say, Larry?"

      Then Runciman argued his case at great length and with much ability. It had been intended that the bet should be governed by the fact whether Dillsborough Wood did or did not contain a fox on that morning. He himself had backed the wood, and Botsey had been strong in his opinion against the wood. Which of them had been practically right? Had not the presence of the poisoned fox shown that he was right? "I think you ought to pay," said Larry.

      "All right," said Botsey riding on, and telling himself that that was what came from making a bet with a man who was not a gentleman.

      "He's as unhappy about that hat," said Runciman, "as though beer had gone down a penny a gallon."

      CHAPTER XII.

      ARABELLA TREFOIL.

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      On the Sunday the party from Bragton went to the parish church—and found it very cold. The duty was done by a young curate who lived in Dillsborough, there being no house in Bragton for him. The rector himself had not been in the church for the last six months, being an invalid. At present he and his wife were away in London, but the vicarage was kept up for his use. The service was certainly not alluring. It was a very wet morning and the curate had ridden over from Dillsborough on a little pony which the rector kept for him in addition to the £100 per annum paid for his services. That he should have got over his service quickly was not a matter of surprise—nor was it wonderful that there should have been no soul-stirring matter in his discourse as he had two sermons to preach every week and to perform single-handed all the other clerical duties of a parish lying four miles distant from his lodgings. Perhaps had he expected the presence of so distinguished a critic as the Senator from Mickewa he might have done better. As it was, being nearly wet through and muddy up to his knees, he did not do the work very well. When Morton and his friends left the church and got into the carriage for their half-mile drive home across the park, Mrs. Morton was the first to speak. "John," she said, "that church is enough to give any woman her death. I won't go there any more."

      "They don't understand warming a church in the country," said John apologetically.

      "Is it not a little too large for the congregation?" asked the Senator.

      The church was large and straggling and ill arranged, and on this particular Sunday had been almost empty. There was in it an harmonium which Mrs. Puttock played when she was at home, but in her absence the attempt made by a few rustics to sing the hymns had not been a musical success. The whole affair had been very sad, and so the Paragon had felt it who knew—and was remembering through the whole service—how these things are done in transatlantic cities.

      "The weather kept the people away I suppose," said Morton.

      "Does that gentleman generally draw large congregations?" asked the persistent Senator.

      "We don't go in for drawing congregations here." Under the cross-examination of his guest the Secretary of Legation almost lost his diplomatic good temper. "We have a church in every parish for those who choose to attend it."

      "And very few do choose," said the Senator. "I can't say that they're wrong." There seemed at the moment to be no necessity to carry the disagreeable conversation any further as they had now reached the house. Mrs. Morton immediately went up-stairs, and the two gentlemen took themselves to the fire in the so-called library, which room was being used as more commodious than the big drawing-room. Mr. Gotobed placed himself on the rug with his back to the fire and immediately reverted to the Church. "That gentleman is paid by tithes I suppose."

      "He's not the rector. He's a curate."

      "Ah;—just so. He looked like a curate. Doesn't the rector do anything?"

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