The fox headed away for a couple of miles towards Impington, as was the custom with the Dillsborough foxes, and then turning to the left was soon over the country borders into Ufford. The pace from the first starting was very good. Larry, under such provocation as that of course would ride, and he did ride. Up as far as the country brook, many were well up. The land was no longer deep; and as the field had not been scattered at the starting, all the men who usually rode were fairly well placed as they came to the brook; but it was acknowledged afterwards that Larry was over it the first. Glomax got into it—as he always does into brooks, and young Runce hurt his horse’s shoulder at the opposite bank. Lord Rufford’s horse balked it, to the Lord’s disgust; but took it afterwards, not losing very much ground. Tony went in and out, the crafty old dog knowing the one bit of hard ground. Then they crossed Purbeck field, as it is still called—which, twenty years since was a wide waste of land, but is now divided by new fences, very grievous to half-blown horses. Sir John Purefoy got a nasty fall over some stiff timber, and here many a halfhearted rider turned to the right into the lane. Hampton and his Lordship, and Battersby, with Fred Botsey and Larry, took it all as it came, but through it all not one of them could give Larry a lead. Then there was manoeuvring into a wood and out of it again, and that saddest of all sights to the riding man, a cloud of horsemen on the road as well placed as though they had ridden the line throughout. In getting out of the road Hampton’s horse slipped up with him, and, though he saw it all, he was never able again to compete for a place. The fox went through the Hampton Wick coverts without hanging a moment, just throwing the hounds for two minutes off their scent at the gravel pits. The check was very useful to Tony, who had got his second horse and came up sputtering, begging the field for G⸺’s sake to be—in short to be anywhere but where they were. Then they were off again down the hill to the left, through Mappy springs and along the top of Ilveston copse, every yard of which is grass—till the number began to be select. At last in a turnip field, three yards from the fence, they turned him over, and Tony, as he jumped off his horse among the hounds, acknowledged to himself that Larry might have had his hand first upon the animal had he cared to do so.
“Twentyman, I’ll give you two hundred for your mare,” said Lord Rufford.
“Ah, my Lord, there are two things that would about kill me.”
“What are they, Larry?” asked Harry Stubbings.
“To offend his Lordship, or to part with the mare.”
“You shall do neither,” said Lord Rufford; “but upon my word I think she’s the fastest thing in this county.” All of which did not cure poor Larry, but it helped to enable him to be a man.
The fox had been killed close to Norrington, and the run was remembered with intense gratification for many a long day after. “It’s that kind of thing that makes hunting beat everything else,” said Lord Rufford, as he went home. That day’s sport certainly had been tanti, and Glomax and the two counties boasted of it for the next three years.
LXXIV
Benedict
Lady Penwether declared to her husband that she had never seen her brother so much cowed as he had been by Miss Trefoil’s visit to Rufford. It was not only that he was unable to assert his usual powers immediately after the attack made upon him, but that on the following day, at Scrobby’s trial, on the Saturday when he started to the meet, and on the Sunday following when he allowed himself to be easily persuaded to go to church, he was silent, sheepish, and evidently afraid of himself. “It is a great pity that we shouldn’t take the ball at the hop,” she said to Sir George.
“What ball;—and what hop?”
“Get him to settle himself. There ought to be an end to this kind of thing now. He has got out of this mess, but every time it becomes worse and worse, and he’ll be taken in horribly by some harpy if we don’t get him to marry decently. I fancy he was very nearly going in this last affair.” Sir George, in this matter, did not quite agree with his wife. It was in his opinion right to avoid Miss Trefoil, but he did not see why his brother-in-law should be precipitated into matrimony with Miss Penge. According to his ideas in such matters a man should be left alone. Therefore, as was customary with him when he opposed his wife, he held his tongue. “You have been called in three or four times when he has been just on the edge of the cliff.”
“I don’t know that that is any reason why he should be pushed over.”
“There is not a word to be said against Caroline. She has a fine fortune of her own, and some
