Poor Mr. Sawyer! If he had only known it! His guide was one of the many gentlemen who could hunt twenty years from the same place, and never know their shortest way from one point to another.
CHAPTER VII
A LEICESTERSHIRE LARK
By good luck our pair of lost sheep soon hit the bridle-gate Mr. Sawyer had been seeking in vain.
“I suppose it’s all right,” said the Honourable Crasher, putting his horse into a canter, with the loose rein and easy off-hand seat peculiar to a gentleman riding to covert.
Mr. Sawyer, following close in his wake, devoutly hoped it was so; but had little leisure for considering the subject, inasmuch as his energies were completely engrossed by the delicate task of gammoning The Dandy that he didn’t want to pull at him. He knew too well, by the way his little horse’s ears were laid back, that he was fully prepared, and only sought an excuse, to come with a rush at the shortest possible notice.
They went on pleasantly enough for a mile or so, the Honourable leading, and commencing a variety of courteous remarks to his follower, which invariably broke off in the middle. At last, the former pulled up with an air of uncertainty.
“Very odd,” he said; “often as I’ve come this way before, I never remember the gate locked.” He had put his whip confidently under the latch, and his horse’s chest against the top, without the slightest effect. “’Pon my soul, it seems rather absurd, but I do believe we’ve lost our way.”
“We,” thought Mr. Sawyer; “and this fiend in top-boots laughs as if it were a joke!” but he only said aloud, “I shall get down and take it off its hinges.”
The Honourable’s reply was simple and conclusive. He pointed to the upper hinge, craftily turned downwards, so as effectually to prevent all tampering with it, and observed in a tone of melancholy apology, “The fence seems rather a bad one” (it was an “oxer,” about seven feet high, and impervious to a bird!). “Do you think your horse could get over the gate after mine? This is only a five-year-old, and very likely to break it,” he added, with the manner of a nurse tempting a child to take its dose.