“I’ll try and remember, Cissy,” answered her mother, with another of those provoking smiles, which might have been too much for the young lady’s equanimity, had not the entrance of the Reverend, bringing with him a strong perfume of tobacco, stables, and James’s horse-blister, put an end to the tête-à-tête, and diverted Mrs. Dove’s attack to her natural prey.
The Reverend was not in the best of humours. He had been feeling a horse’s legs—the swelling of which no stimulant, however strong, seemed to be able to reduce. It was aggravating to make his hands smell like a chemist’s shop, and at the same time to be aware that his favourite’s legs were getting rounder and rounder under the application. It was not consolatory to be told by the groom that “the old ’oss was about wore out.” Nor was it reassuring to reflect that he wanted for half-a-dozen other purposes the couple of hundred it would take to replace him. These, however, are the annoyances to which hunting men are subject; the metaphorical thorns that bristle round our rose, and make her all the dearer and the sweeter for their sharpness. As he returned to the house viâ the pigsties, he could scarcely raise sufficient interest to examine the lately-arrived litter of nine. Spotted black and white, they reminded him of fox-hound puppies; and to the Reverend, short of horses as he was, the association was but suggestive of annoyance.
When he entered the little drawing-room, Mrs. Dove knew by his face that the moment was an unpropitious one at which to hazard a request for anything she wanted to obtain; but having managed him for a quarter of a century, it would have been odd if she had not known exactly how to get her own way with him now.
“My dear,” she said, “I’ve a letter from that man at Brighton about the house we had last year. He wants to know if we would like to engage it for a couple of months in the spring. It would be a good opportunity to give Cissy a little sea-bathing, you know.”
Now, the Reverend had the same horror of that, as of other watering-places, which is usually entertained by middle-aged gentlemen of settled habits, who do not choose to accept second-rate dissipation and salt-water as equivalents for the comforts of a home. He had indeed, during the previous summer, been seduced into spending two months at Brighton, under the erroneous impression that on those Sussex downs the harriers hunted all the year round; but, having found out his mistake, had inwardly registered a vow never to be “let in” for such a benefit again. It was no wonder that he rose freely at the suggestion.
“Gracious Heavens! Mrs. Dove!” exclaimed the Reverend, plumping down into an arm-chair, and raising both hands in irritable deprecation, “knowing what you do, how can you ask such a question? Of course, if this house is too uncomfortable to live in, and it don’t matter about the parish going to the d— to the dogs, and the Bishop is to be a nonentity, and my duties a farce, you are perfectly right to go gadding about from here to Brighton, and from Brighton to London, and from London to Halifax, if you like, and I shall be happy to indulge you. I only wish you would tell me where the money is to come from—where the money is to come from, Mrs. Dove—that’s all!” And, having thus spoken, the Reverend took up the Leicester Journal, and looked over the top of it at his wife, as if he had indeed propounded a poser.
This was exactly what that dear artful woman wanted. She knew that when he had blown off his steam, her husband would settle down into his usual easy temper, and become perfectly malleable in about five minutes. So she folded the poor parishioner’s little shirt with the nicest accuracy, and replied in the most perfect good-humour—
“Well, dear, I’m sure I don’t want to move from here till we go to London. You know I’m so fond of my garden in the spring, and I like you to get your hunting as long as you can: it does you so much good. My idea is, London about the time of the Derby; then Ascot for a week; and home again by the beginning of July. After all, we are wonderfully well situated here for the country as regards society, and Harborough never was so full as it seems this season. What should we do in this part of the world if it wasn’t for hunting?”
Precious, in proportion to their rarity, opinions so orthodox sank like music in the Reverend’s ear. Five-and-twenty years’ experience had failed to teach him, that such congenial sentiments must as necessarily be followed by a request, as a soft southerly wind is succeeded by rain. And this is the strangest feature in our subservience to the other sex. Though they deceive us ninety-nine times, we believe them the hundredth, and, more foolish than the feathered biped, though its meshes be spread in our very sight, rush open-eyed, neck-and-heels into the net of the fowler.
The Reverend glanced at the wife of his bosom, and thought her wonderfully like that picture done a score of years ago. He said as much: but the compliment by no means diverted Mrs. Dove from the object she had in view. “Cissy and I were just talking,” said she simply, “of your friend Mr. Crasher, and the rest of them. By the bye, you really ought to ask some of them to dinner. There’s a barrel of oysters come by rail last night, and our turkeys this year are finer than usual. Better say Tuesday, don’t you think, Papa?” added she coaxingly.