He came apologizing through the open window; his boots were very wet, almost as if he had walked in water.
Next morning, during a breakfast at which all war restrictions were removed, and Anne worked her blissful way with eggs and bacon and sausages, General Brownlow asked if a mount could be provided for his man, who loved a hunt, above all things, and Gheena offered her young horse heartily.
"He bucks a little, but he's a fine lepper," she said, "and his mouth is not quite made. Still, if the man didn't mind that—you see, you're riding Greybird as the best we've got, and we have to mount Mr. Keefe too."
The General's man, who had again been out to see the coast before breakfast, accepted gratefully, saying that any horse would do.
They drove to the meet, old Dillon coming to bring the General's car along, and found no hounds when they reached the fixture, cross-roads tracking through a boggy stretch with a small gorse-covert inset on rising ground just beyond.
Private information of the presence of a somebody from the War Office having trickled through, everyone who had a horse had turned out. The horses had been shaven above as well as below. Mrs. O'Gorman wore her best habit again, with grievous thoughts of how it had shrunk lying by. A glint of coppery sun came shining through a soft mist of clouds, the tang of salt mixing with the scent of peat.
When the Cahercalla Darracq, its tint a brilliant yellow, drove up, its occupiers seemed to consider that the non-arrival of hounds was of minor importance, since they supplied the event of the day.
For it held Lancelot in khaki, his leg extended in front of him upon a variety of cushions and supports, his face a little white, but not thin.
Lancelot Freyne was a long boy with a great deal of loose fat distributed unevenly. It inclined to his shoulders and cheeks, and then bulged out again in his thighs. He was loose-lipped and combined a desire to show his excellent imaginative powers with a meekness due to suppression from his infancy by his mother and elder sister.
The crowd of people round the car were slaves to the throb of his foot. He answered questions concerning the war with vigorous decision, and apparently had seen flocks of prisoners, and droves of guns, and yet was gloomy over it all.