"Very hospitable and friendly of you and Cathcart, to be sure," he continued, "to throw open your house in this way. Kindness alike to man and beast, man and beast, for which my son and I are naturally very grateful."
Lord Shotover looked at Mary again, smiling.—"Little mixed that statement, isn't it," he said, "unless we take for granted that I'm the beast?"
"I was a good deal perplexed, I own, Mrs. Cathcart, as to how we should get home without giving the horses a rest and having them gruelled. Fourteen miles——"
"A precious long fourteen too," put in Shotover.
"So it is," his father agreed, "a long fourteen. And my horse was pumped, regularly pumped. I can't bear to see a horse as done as that. It distresses me, downright distresses me. Hate to over-press a horse. Hate to over-press anything that can't stand up to you and take its revenge on you. Always feel ashamed of myself if I've over-pressed a horse. But I hadn't reckoned on the distance."
"'The pace was too hot to inquire,'" quoted Shotover.
"So it was. Meeting at Grimshott, you see, we very rarely kill so far on this side of the country."
"Breaking just where he did, I'd have bet on that fox doubling back under Talepenny wood and making across the vale for the earths in the big Brockhurst warren," Lord Shotover declared.
"Would you, though?" said his father. "Very reasonable forecast, very reasonable, indeed. Quite the likeliest thing for him to do, only he didn't do it. Don't believe that fox belonged to this side of the country at all. Don't understand his tactics. If it had been in my poor friend Denier's time, I might have suspected him of being a bagman."
Lord Fallowfeild chuckled a little.