“O knew they but their happiness, of men the happiest” are the sporting country gentlemen who live at home at ease—unvexed alike with the torments of the money-maker and the anxieties of the great, and yet sufficiently informed and refined to be the companions of either—men who see and enjoy nature in all her moods and varieties, and live unfettered with the pomp and vexation of keeping up appearances, envying no one, whoever may envy them. If once a man quits this happy rank to breast the contending billows of party in hopes of rising to the one above it, what a harvest of discord he sows for his own reaping. If a man wants to be thoroughly disgusted with human nature, let him ally himself unreservedly to a political party. He will find cozening and sneaking and selfishness in all their varieties, and patriotic false pretences in their most luxuriant growth. But we are getting in advance of our subject, our thesis being Mr. and Mrs. Wotherspoon.
Our snuffy friend Spoon was not exempt from the ambitious failings of lesser men. His great object of ambition was to get Major Yammerton to visit him—or perhaps to put it more correctly, his great object of ambition was to visit Major Yammerton. But then, unfortunately, it requires two parties to these bargains; and Mrs. Yammerton wouldn’t agree to it, not so much because old Spoon had been a butler, but because his wife (our pen splutters as it writes the objection) his wife had been a—a—housekeeper. A handsome housekeeper she was, too, when she first came into the country; so handsome, indeed, that Dicky Boggledike had made two excursions over to their neighbour, Farmer Flamstead, to see her, and had reported upon her very favourably to the noble Earl his august master.
Still Mrs. Yammerton wouldn’t visit her. In vain Mrs. Wotherspoon sent her bantams’ eggs, and guinea fowls’ eggs, and cuttings from their famous yellow rose-tree; in vain old Spoon got a worn-out horse, and invested his nether man in white cords and top boots to turn out after the harriers; in vain he walked a hound in summer, and pulled down gaps, and lifted gates off their hinges in winter—it all only produced thanks and politeness. The Yammertons and they were very good How-do-you-do? neighbours, but the true beef-and-mutton test of British friendship was wanting. The dinner is the thing that signs and seals the acquaintance.
Thus they had gone on from summer to summer, and from season to season, until hope deferred had not only made old Spoon’s heart sick, but had also seen the white cords go at the knees, causing him to retire his legs into the military-striped cinnamon-coloured tweeds in which he appears in:
In addition to muffling his legs, he had begun to mutter and talk about giving up hunting,—getting old,—last season—and so on, which made the Major think he would be losing one of the most personable of his field. This made him pause and consider how to avert the misfortune. Hunted hares he had sent him in more than regular rotation: he had liquored him repeatedly at the door; the ladies had reciprocated the eggs and the cuttings, with dahlias, and Sir Harry strawberry runners; and there really seemed very little left about the place wherewith to propitiate a refractory sportsman. At this critical juncture, a too confiding hare was reported by Cicely Bennett, farmer Merry field’s dairymaid, to have taken up her quarters among some tussuckey brambles at the north-east corner of Mr. Wotherspoon’s cow pasture—a most unusual, indeed almost unprecedented circumstance, which was communicated by Wotherspoon in person to the Major at the next meet of the hounds at Girdle Stone Green, and received with unfeigned delight by the latter.
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed he, wringing the old dandy’s hand; “you don’t say so!” repeated he, with enthusiasm, for hares were scarce, and the country good; in addition to which the Major knew all the gaps.
“I do,” replied Spoon, with a confident air, that as good as said, you may take my word for anything connected with hunting.
“Well, then, I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” rejoined the Major, poking him familiarly in the ribs with his whip, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do; we’ll have a turn at her on Tuesday—meet at your house, eh? what say you to that?”