Philippa said she went because she had done her hair for riding before she could see out of the window—a fiction beneath the notice of any intelligent husband. I went because I had told my new groom, Wilson (an English disciplinarian), that I was going, and I was therefore caught in the cogs of the inexorable wheel of stable routine. I also went because I nourished a faint hope that I might be able to place before the general public, and especially before Flurry Knox, an authentic first version of the McRory episode. Moreover, I had a headache; but this I was not going to mention, knowing that the sun never sets upon the jests consecrated to after-dinner headaches.
As we rode away from Shreelane, and felt the thick small rain in our faces, and saw the spray blown off the puddles by the wind, and heard the sea-gulls, five miles inland, squealing in the mist overhead, I said that it was preposterous to think of hunting at Lonen Hill in such weather, and that I was going home. Philippa said that we might as well go on to the meet, to exercise the horses, and that we could then come straight home. (I have a sister who has said that I am a lath painted to look like iron, and that Philippa is iron painted to look like a lath.)
The meet was in shelter, the generous shelter of Lonen Hill, which interposed itself between us and the weather. There is just space for the road, between the shore of Lough Lonen and the southern face of the hill, that runs precipitously up into the sky for some six hundred feet, dark with fir-trees, and heather, and furze, fortified with rock—a place renowned as a fastness for foxes and woodcock (whose fancies as to desirable winter residences generally coincide). One would have thought that only a pack of monkeys could deal with such a covert, but hounds went through it, and so did beaters—or said they did.
We found the hounds waiting in an old quarry under the side of the hill, and, a little farther on, a very small and select company of waterproofs was huddled under the branches of a fir-tree that hung over the road. As we neared them I recognised Miss Bennett's firm and capable back: she was riding the black mare that she had come over to "pass on" to old McRory. It was Philippa who pointed out that she was accompanied by Miss Larkie McRory, seated on a stout and shaggy animal, whose grey hindquarters were draped by the folds of its rider's voluminous black macintosh, in a manner that recalled the historic statue of the Iron Duke. Farther on, Mrs. Flurry and her mother, the redoubtable Lady Knox, were getting out of a motor and getting themselves on to their horses.
"There's room under the umbrella for Mrs. Yeates!" called out Miss Bennett hospitably, "but the Major must find one for himself, and a very big one, too!"
"We could make room for him here," said Miss Larkie McRory, "if he liked to come."
I maintained, I hope, an imperturbable demeanour, and passed on.
"Who is that?" said Lady Knox, approaching me, on her large and competent iron grey.
I informed her, briefly, and without prejudice.
"Oh, one of that crew," said Lady Knox, without further comment.