He is now in a terrible stew, and has been backwards and forwards between the house and the stable, and in and out of the kennel, and has called Solomon repeatedly from his work to give him further instructions and further instructions still, until the Major has about confused himself and every body about him. As soon as ever he heard by his tramp overhead that Billy had got into his boots, he went to the bottom of the stairs and holloaed along the passage towards the kitchen. “Betty! Betty! Betty! send in breakfast as soon as ever Mr. Pringle comes down!”’ “Ah, dere is de Majur.” observed Monsieur, pausing from Billy’s hair-arranging to listen—“him kick up dc deval’s own dost on a huntin’ mornin’.”
“What’s happened him?” asked Billy.
“Don’t know—but von vould think he was going to storm a city—take Sebastopol himself,” replied Monsieur, shrugging his broad shoulders. He then resumed his valeting operations, and crowned the whole by putting Billy into his green cut-away, without giving him even a peep of the pink.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Yammerton has been holding a court of inquiry in the kitchen and larder, as to the extent of the overnight mischief, smelling at this dish and that, criticising the spoons, and subjecting each castor-oily offender to severe ablution in boiling water. Of course no one could tell in whose hands the bottle of “cold drawn” had come “in two,” and Monsieur was too good a judge to know anything about it; so as the mischief couldn’t be repaired, it was no use bewailing it farther than to make a knot in her mind to be more careful of such dangerous commodities in future.
Betty Bone had everything—tea, coffee, bread, cakes, eggs, ham (fried so as to hide the spurious flavour), honey, jam, &c., ready for Miss Benson, who had been impressed into the carrying service, vice the Bumbler turned whip, to take in as soon as Mr. Pringle descended, a fact that was announced to the household by the Major’s uproarious greeting of him in the passage. He was overjoyed to see him! He hoped he was none the worse for his over-night festivities; and without waiting for an answer to that, he was delighted to say that it was a fine hunting morning, and as far as human judgment could form an opinion, a good scenting one; but after five-and-thirty years’ experience as a master of “haryers,” he could conscientiously say that there was nothing so doubtful or ticklish as scent, and he made no doubt Mr. Pringle’s experience would confirm his own, that many days when they might expect it to be first-rate, it was bad, and many days when they might expect it to be bad, it was first-rate; to all which accumulated infliction Billy replied with his usual imperturbable “Yarse,” and passed on to the more agreeable occupation of greeting the young ladies in the dining-room. Very glad they all were to see him as he shook hands with all three.
The Major, however, was not to be put off that way; and as he could not get Billy to talk about hunting, he drew his attention to breakfast, observing that they had a goodish trot before them, and that punctuality was the politeness of princes. Saying which, he sat down, laying his great gold watch open on a plate beside him, so that its noisy ticking might remind Billy of what they had to do. The Major couldn’t make it out how it was that the souls of the young men of the present day are so difficult to inflame about hunting. Here was he, turned of————, and as eager in the pursuit as ever. “Must be that they smoke all their energies out,” thought he; and then applied himself vigorously to his tea and toast, looking up every now and then with irate looks at his wife and daughters, whose volubility greatly retarded Billy’s breakfast proceedings. He, nevertheless, made sundry efforts to edge in a hunting conversation himself, observing that Mr. Pringle mustn’t expect such an establishment as the Peer’s, or perhaps many that he was accustomed to—that they would have rather a shortish pack out, which would enable them to take the field again at an early day, and so on; all of which Billy received with the most provoking indifference, making the Major wish he mightn’t be a regular crasher, who cared for nothing but riding. At length, tea, toast, eggs, ham, jam, all had been successively taxed, the Major closed and pocketed his noisy watch, and the doomed youth rose to perform the dread penance with the pack. “Good byes,” “good mornings,” “hope you’ll have good sport,” followed his bowing spur-clanking exit from the room.
A loud crack of the Major’s hammer-headed whip now announced their arrival in the stable-yard, which was at once a signal for the hounds to raise a merry cry, and for the stable-men to loosen their horses’ heads from the pillar-reins. It also brought a bevy of caps and curl-papers to the back windows of the house to see the young Earl, for so Rougier had assured them his master was—(heir to the Earldom of Ladythorne)—mount. At a second crack of the whip the stable-door flew open, and as a shirt-sleeved lad receded, the grey-headed, green-coated sage Solomon advanced, leading forth the sleek, well-tended, well-coddled, Napoleon the Great.
Amid the various offices filled by this Mathews-at-home of a servant, there was none perhaps in which he looked better or more natural than in that of a huntsman. Short, spare, neat, with a bright black eye, contrasting with the sobered hue of his thin grey hair, no one would suppose that the calfless little yellow and brown-liveried coachman of the previous night was the trim, neatly-booted, neatly-tied huntsman now raising his cap to the Richest Commoner in England, and his great master Major Yammerton—Major of the Featherbedfordshire Militia, master of “haryers,” and expectant magistrate.
“Well, Solomon,” said the Major, acknowledging his salute, as though it was their first meeting of the morning, “well, Solomon, what do you think of the day?”
“Well, sir, I think the day’s well enough,” replied Solomon, who was no waster of words.