"One way of doing it." General Brownlow looked to his right, to see his man on the bay sail sleepily into the air and clear even the boreen at the landing side.
The pace had been steady enough to shake off people who wanted to look before they leapt. The Field had thinned out. Hounds bent to the right along a rushy, sour field when scent failed a little, and headed for the road which wound its grey ribbon up the side of a steep hill.
On this something yellow caught the eye. Home Ruler's bolt was shot, but Grandjer and Beauty stopped on the low bank on to the road and looked up anxiously, thus explaining to the noisy crew behind that they were at fault.
"He has gone right back, Darby," said Annette Freyne excitedly. "So don't try on. He turned here. Oh, Lance, this is nice for you! So lucky, General, for our invalid." But at this point Darby's voice roared out immediate orders to have that car stopped. "You headed him, you something goldfish!" yelled the man, who was rapidly growing used to his position in life. "You canaries, chirrupping there, when no one wants you."
"Canaries! with a wounded hero from the front," said Mr. Freyne's mother, after a long hurt pause. "If he did see a fox, who could object, really, Darby! And canaries!"
"I'll intern you if you don't put it out!" roared Darby.
"Put it out or I'll arrest you!" blared the General, with sudden fierceness, to Lancelot.
"And it isn't as if she always started," wailed Annette. "They're crossing the road lower down; he must have gone on that far," she said a moment later, fixing baleful eyes on Darby's back. "To be so rude to us!"
George Freyne's elder sister, who was large, and muddy as to complexion, kept murmuring Darby's insults incessantly, so that when she said "Go on" for a change, Annette, her daughter, told the man to start the canary, and was accused, despite her thirty years, of impertinence to her mother.
Beauty meantime had towled across the road, followed by Daisy, Home Ruler and Spinster, and they carried on across a field of sodden ploughed upland, which would have taxed the noses of the fox-hounds sorely.