Meanwhile I am still reading Mr. Sponge in the schoolroom. But it must not be supposed that I launched myself in the hunting-field with unpremeditative temerity. Far from it. It was all very well to be reading about how Mr. Sponge bought a new pair of top-boots in Oxford Street sixty years ago. But the notion of my inexpert self acquiring such unfamiliar accoutrements seemed problematic and audacious. My trepidation blinded me to the obvious fact that bootmakers were willing and even eager, to do their best for me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed dressing up as a sportsman, and the box-cloth gaiters which I had bought in Ashbridge were a source of considerable satisfaction when they encased my calves, and Miriam’s long-suffering face looked in at the book-room door with “Your horse, sir”—for Dixon liked to bring the horse round to the front door when I was going out for a ride.
I always went out alone, for the driving horse was a nonentity and seldom appeared without the dogcart. Also, as I have already explained, I was making my equestrian experiment without active interference or supervision. When I got home again Dixon would ask, “Did he go all right?” and I would hang about the loose-box while Harkaway was being rubbed down. I always had a few things to tell Dixon about my two hours’ exercise—how I’d been through the Hookham woods and had given him a nice gallop, and how I’d jumped the hedge by Dunk’s Windmill on the way home (it was a very small hedge, and I lost a stirrup and very nearly fell off, but there was no need to mention that). And then we would agree that the old horse was looking grand and improving every day. It was also agreed that Mr. Gaffikin must have given him a pretty thick time out hunting and that a spell of easy work would do him all the good in the world.
Until the middle of February his reappearance with the hounds was not referred to. But one afternoon (when I had modestly admitted that we had jumped a small stile when taking the shortcut between Clay Hill and Marl Place) Dixon interrupted his hissing to look up at me, and said in his most noncommittal tone, “I see they’re meeting at Finchurst Green on Tuesday.” The significance of this remark was unmistakeable. The next day I bicycled to Ashbridge and bought a pair of ready-made “butcher-boots.”
Of all the pairs of hunting-boots which I have ever owned, the Ashbridge pair remain vividly in my mind as a long way the worst. Judged by the critical standard which I have since acquired, their appearance was despicable. This was equalled by the difficulty of struggling into them, and the discomfort they caused while I wore them. Any long-legged “thruster” will tell you that a smart pair of boots is bound to cause trouble for the first few days. It is the penalty of smartness. (And I have heard of a young man with a broken ankle who, though almost fainting with the pain of his boot being pulled off, was able to gasp out—“Don’t cut it; they’re the best pair Craxwell’s ever made for me.”) But the Ashbridge boots, when I started for Finchurst Green, hung spurless on each side of Harkaway, stiff, ill-shaped, and palpably provincial in origin. And for some reason known only to their anonymous maker, they persistently refused to “take a polish.” Their complexion was lustreless and clammy, although Aunt Evelyn’s odd man had given them all the energy of his elbow. But it wasn’t until I had surreptitiously compared them with other boots that I realized their shortcomings (one of the worst of which was their lack of length in the leg). A boot can look just as silly as a human being.
However, I had other anxieties as I rode to the meet, for I was no less shy and apprehensive than I had been on my way to the same place ten years earlier. At the meet I knew no one except Mr. Gaffikin, who came oscillating up to me, resplendent in his pink coat and wearing a low-crowned “coachy” hat cocked jauntily over his right ear. After greeting me with the utmost geniality and good-fellowship, he fell into a portentous silence; bunching up his moustache under his fleshy nose with an air of profound cogitation and knowingness, he cast his eye over Harkaway. When he had concluded this scrutiny he looked up and
