“You’ve got a pleasanter mount than usual to-day, Mr. Tips,” I remarked, coming alongside of him; whereat the four-year-old tucked its long tail in, and gave a playful kick or two, snorting the while in pure gaiety of heart. “Are you going to make a hunter of him, or have you only brought him out for exercise?”
Mr. Tips dived towards his fully-occupied hands with his head, as the nearest approach he could afford towards touching his hat.
“Never seen hounds till to-day, sir,” he replied. “Sweet young horse he is, sir, as ever looked through a bridle; a kind animal, too, both in the stable and out; as mild as a milch cow, and as handy as a ladies’-maid.”
Just then the object of our joint praises, startled, pardonably enough, by a tinker’s caravan that had taken up a conspicuous position on the Green, shied violently away from the alarming object, and did not recover its equanimity without a succession of bounds and plunges, such as would have unseated most men ignominiously, but which produced no perceptible effect on the demeanour of the experienced Tips, his affability only becoming, if possible, more conspicuous than before.
Lost in admiration of my companion’s skill—for I confess to a great weakness for real finished horsemanship such as in my own person I have never yet been able to acquire—and taken up with the movements of the young horse and the conversation of its rider, I had not remarked that we had let the hounds slip on so far ahead as to find ourselves a long way behind the whole moving cavalcade, proceeding leisurely towards the gorse. An exclamation from Mr. Tips roused me to the true state of affairs.
“Best shog on a little, sir,” said he, with a sparkle of excitement in his eye. “Blessed if they haven’t reached the covert already! and are putting in. There’s a short cut; this way, Mr. Softly, if you’ll be so good as follow me.”
With these words, Tips thrust open an awkward hand-gate, the young one pushing it with his chest, as I felt convinced at the time, far more handily than Tipple Cider would have done, and entered a low swampy pasture patched with rushes, and stretching right away to the further end of the gorse from that where the hounds were put in. Shutting my eyes to the great probability there was of our heading the fox, and resolving to shut my ears to the expostulations that would too surely accompany such a catastrophe, I followed my leader along the pasture, rather in a state of nervous trepidation, in no measure soothed by the view I now obtained of the assembled field, amongst whom I had no difficulty in recognising the well-known riding-habit.
Tips sitting down in the saddle, put the four-year-old into a lurching awkward kind of gallop, and I followed him at a venture, Tipple Cider raking and snatching at his bridle in disagreeable exuberance of spirits, as if he were rather short of work.
There was a low rail at the extremity of the pasture, fortifying what had once been a gap into the covert itself, a shelter I was most anxious to reach before the eagle-eye of the Earl could spy me out in so untoward a position. I had already made up my mind for a considerable détour which would bring me to a friendly hand-gate (I hate the foolish practice of jumping when hounds are not running), when I saw Tips charge this said rail with the utmost coolness; the four-year-old resenting such an unnecessary demonstration, by turning short round, and kicking out violently at the offending timber.
“Give us a lead, Mr. Softly, if it isn’t taking too great a liberty,” said Tips, as quietly as if this cool request were the most natural thing in the world; adding, as a clinching argument, “You’ve on a hunter, I know.”