However, they all got on remarkably well. Even the Honourable Crasher made a feeble joke, of which the point somehow escaped his listeners—without, however, destroying his own enjoyment in its delivery. By the time Papa proposed an adjournment to the stables, to inspect the four-year-old—“Cissy” pleading for two minutes’ law, to put her hat on—they were all in high good-humour. If “one spur in the head” be “worth two in the heel,” I think it is equally true that a slight stimulant about 1.30 is twice as effectual as a feast at 7.45.

The four-year-old was a fine, lengthy, lashing-looking young horse, to use a graphic expression, more akin to the kennel than the stable. He had all that thickness of outline and coarseness of particular points which sportsmen so like to see, when pedigrees are unimpeachable, and which are sure to grow out into eventual strength and symmetry. Mr. Sawyer would perhaps have admired him more, had his attention not been distracted by the apparition in the young one’s box of the following choice assortment: viz. one pair of Balmoral-boots (arched instep and pointed heels, after Leech); one scarlet jupe, short and full; one morning-gown, very rich and voluminous, tucked and girt up all about ditto; one pair of neat little gloved hands, with tight-fitting bust and arms to match; and one rosy, smiling, happy face; the whole crowned by such a hat and feather as said “Suivez moi!” far more peremptorily than ever did Henri Quatre’s great white panache. After that, he looked very little at the four-year-old.

Poor Mr. Sawyer! When his horse was led out, to take him back to Harborough, she patted its grey nose, and called it “a darling.” “A darling!” and the ungrateful brute snorted all over her pretty face and hands! Well, he patted its neck himself, as he rode out of the yard.

The day seemed to have improved somehow, though the fog was equally dense, and twilight—or rather no-light—had set in. That cigar, too, which the Honourable gave him just under Langton, he thought, was the best he had ever smoked in his life.

CHAPTER IX
FOUR O’CLOCK, STABLES

I should be sorry for my reader to suppose that John Standish Sawyer was what is termed “a susceptible man.” On the contrary, since his well-remembered rejection by Miss Mexico, an event of which it is unnecessary to specify the date, he had steeled himself resolutely against the fair, and devoted his energies, if possible, more exclusively than ever to the worship of Diana. Cold as she is at times, and rigorous as are her icy frowns, corrugating that beaming face into unpropitious wrinkles, at least she is a mistress who never deceives. The thermometer at your dressing-room window tells you exactly the humour in which you will find her, and we do not hear the old, whose season of enjoyment has passed away, regretting the hours and days they have spent in her service. “If I had my time to come over again,” I heard a hale octogenarian declare not long ago, “I should make one alteration. I should flirt a little less and hunt a great deal more.” He had been a four-days-a-week man all his life, and in his youth a fierce admirer of the ladies. The foregoing, nevertheless, was the result of his experience.

Mr. Sawyer, like any other male biped, was not above being flattered and pleased by the notice of such a girl as Miss Dove. It smoothed his feathers, so to speak, and encouraged him to think better of himself. The Honourable Crasher, too, who had quite taken a fancy to his new friend, asked him to a tête-à-tête dinner at his lodgings on the night after the Tilton Wood meet; and as the wine was remarkably good, and the host, in his sleepy, quiet way, rather pleasant company, he spent an agreeable evening enough.

For the next two or three days there was a catching kind of frost, of the most provoking description, just hard enough to stop hunting, yet with a deceitful appearance of “going” which prevented sportsmen from leaving their quarters for London. During this interregnum Mr. Sawyer had leisure to unpack his things, arrange his books—consisting of “Colonel White’s Observations on Fox-hunting,” “Ask Mamma” (illustrated with coloured prints), and a few back numbers of the Sporting Magazine,—inspect his stables, watch the roan putting on flesh, and the departure of the grey’s cough, besides making acquaintance with the persons and studs of Mr. Savage, Captain Struggles, and Major Brush—gentlemen possessing, one and all, an inexhaustible fund of spirits, an untiring delight in horseflesh, numerous suits of wearing apparel, such as nearly approached the character of fancy dresses, and, to all appearance, a lack of nothing in the world except ready money. They fraternised willingly enough with our friend, smoked cigars with him at his hotel in the morning, took him over their stables at dusk, did not try to sell him any of their horses, which would indeed have been a hopeless enterprise, and generally made the world as pleasant for him as was in their power. Mr. Sawyer began to think he had landed in Utopia at last—that he had reached the Happy Land, where, metaphorically speaking, it was to be “beer and skittles” all day long. The only drawback to his felicity was the sustained discontent of old Isaac, and an increasing tendency to inebriety on the part of The Boy.

Perhaps my reader will best understand his situation from a description of a visit paid, according to custom, by the whole gang to the stables of the Honourable Crasher. Time 4.30, on a dark afternoon, with every appearance of a thaw.