"I believe you want to break my heart," said old Neefit.
That evening her mother asked her what she had been doing that afternoon. "I just took a walk with Ontario Moggs," said Polly.
"Well?"
"And I've just engaged myself straight off, and you had better tell father. I mean to keep to it, mother, let anybody say anything. I wouldn't go back from my promise if they were to drag me. So father may as well know at once."
CHAPTER XLIX.
AMONG THE PICTURES.
Norfolk is a county by no means devoted to hunting, and Ralph Newton,—the disinherited Ralph as we may call him,—had been advised by some of his friends round Newton to pitch his tent elsewhere,—because of his love of that sport. "You'll get a bit of land just as cheap in the shires," Morris had said to him. "And, if I were you, I wouldn't go among a set of fellows who don't think of anything in the world except partridges." Mr. Morris, who was a very good fellow in his way, devoted a considerable portion of his mental and physical energies to the birth, rearing, education, preservation, and subsequent use of the fox,—thinking that in so doing he employed himself nobly as a country gentleman; but he thoroughly despised a county in which partridges were worshipped.
"They do preserve foxes," pleaded Ralph.
"One man does, and the next don't. You ought to know what that means. It's the most heart-breaking kind of thing in the world. I'd sooner be without foxes altogether, and ride to a drag;—I would indeed." This assertion Mr. Morris made in a sadly solemn tone, such as men use when they speak of some adversity which fate and fortune may be preparing for them. "I'd a deal rather die than bear it," says the melancholy friend; or,—"I'd much sooner put up with a crust in a corner." "I'd rather ride to a drag;—I would indeed," said Mr. Morris, with a shake of the head, and a low sigh. As for life without riding to hounds at all, Mr. Morris did not for a moment suppose that his friend contemplated such an existence.