As Mr. Sawyer rode down to the gorse, he was pleased to feel Hotspur step so lightly and vigorously under him. The horse shook his bit, and cocked his ears, and reached at his bridle to get near the hounds. He felt like a good one, and we all know what confidence that sensation imparts to the rider. Mr. Sawyer forgot all about Miss Dove, and the unprovoked manner in which she had snubbed him. It was cheerful to hear one or two complimentary remarks exchanged between the passing sportsmen.
“That’s a clever horse,” said a tall heavy man, himself admirably mounted, indicating the roan with a nod, and addressing a supercilious-looking person in a black coat, whose attention was much taken up with the appearance of his own legs and feet, which he was looking at alternately en profile.
“Rather,” answered the supercilious person, glancing up for an instant from his occupation—“Who’s the man? Never saw such a man; never saw such boots; never saw a fellow so badly got-up altogether.”
At this juncture the Honourable Crasher, cantering by on Topsy-Turvy, accosted our friend with good-humoured familiarity, and the supercilious man, changing his mind all in a moment, about Mr. Sawyer and his boots, resolved to take the first opportunity of making the stranger’s acquaintance. In effect he followed the last comer to prosecute this intention. The Honourable C. disappearing through a bullfinch, on Topsy-Turvy, whom he thus hoped to put in good-humour, was ere this in a field alongside of the hounds, which he was likely to have all to himself.
Soon a hand-gate stems the increasing cavalcade, and the stoppage becoming more obstinate, owing to Mr. Sawyer’s abortive attempts to open the same, a good deal of conversation, rhetorical rather than complimentary, is the result.
“Put your whip under the latch,” says one.
“Got the wrong hand to it,” sneers another.
“What a tarnation muff!” vociferates a third.
“Ware heels!” exclaims a fourth, as a wicked little bay mare, in the thick of them, lets out with unerring precision; and one man says, “What a shame it is to bring such a devil as that into a crowd!” and another opines that “The kick will be out of her before two o’clock!” and the owner, profuse in apologies, is only thinking of slipping through the gate, and going on to get a start.
Meanwhile Hotspur makes himself profoundly ridiculous, pushing the gate when the latch is down, and wincing from it when he ought to shove; also finding himself totally unassisted by the crook of his master’s whip, which keeps slipping on the wet green wood, waxes irritable, rears up, and threatens to vary the entertainment, by performing a somersault into the next field.