St. Josephs was too well known in general society not to find acquaintances even here, though he was hardly prepared to meet representatives of so many pursuits and professions, booted and spurred for the chase, and judging by the ceaseless banter they interchanged,
"All determined to ride, each resolved to be first."
Soldiers, sailors, diplomatists, bankers, lawyers, artists, authors, men of pleasure, and men of business, holding daily papers they never looked at, were all talking across each other, and laughing incessantly, while enthroned at one end of the carriage sat the best sportsman and most popular member of the assemblage, whose opinions, like his horses, carried great weight, and were of as unflinching a nature as his riding, so that he was esteemed a sort of president in jack-boots. Opposite him was placed pretty Irish Norah, now Mrs. Walters, intensely excited by her first appearance at what she called "an English hunt," while she imparted to Daisy, in a mellower brogue than usual, very original ideas on things in general, and especially on the country through which they were now flying at the rate of forty miles an hour.
"It's like a garden where it's in tillage, and a croquet-lawn where it's in pasture," said Norah, after a gracious recognition of the General, and cordial greeting to Bill, who was bundled in at Willesden, panting, with his spurs in his hand. "Ah! now, Daisy, it's little of the whip poor Boneen will be wanting for easy leaps like them."
"Wait till you get into the vale," said Daisy; "and whatever you do let his head alone. Follow me close, and if I'm down, ride over me. It's the custom of the country."
The General smiled.
"I haven't been there for twenty years," said he; "but I can remember in my time we were not very particular. I shall follow my old friend," he added, nodding to the president, whose nether garments were of the strongest and most workmanlike materials; "when a man has no regular hunting things, he wants a leader to turn the thorns, and from all I hear, if I can only stick to mine, I shall be in a very good place."
Everybody agreed to this, scanning the speaker with approving glances, the while, St. Josephs, though wearing trousers and a common morning coat, had something in his appearance that denoted the practised horseman; and when he talked of "twenty years ago," his listeners gave him credit for those successes which in all times, are attributed to the men of the past.
"Mrs. Walters must be a little careful at the doubles," hazarded a quiet good-looking man who had not yet spoken, but whose nature it was to be exceedingly courteous, where ladies were concerned. "A wise horse that knows its rider is everything in the vale."
Norah looked into the speaker's dark eyes with a quaint smile.