'Good morning, Frosty! good morning!' exclaim half-a-dozen voices, that it would be difficult to appropriate from the denseness of the fog. Frosty and the whips make a general salute with their caps.
'Well, Frosty, I suppose you've heard what a run we had yesterday?' exclaims Charley Slapp, as soon as Frosty and the hounds are settled.
'Had they, sir—had they?' replies Frosty, with a slight touch of his cap and a sneer. 'Glad to hear it, sir—glad to hear it. Hope they killed, sir—hope they killed!' with a still slighter touch of the cap.
'Killed, aye!—killed in the open just below Crabstone Green, in your country,' adding, 'It was one of your foxes, I believe.'
'Glad of it, sir—glad of it, sir,' replies Frosty. 'They wanted blood sadly—they wanted blood sadly. Quite welcome to one of our foxes, sir—quite welcome. That's a brace and a 'alf they've killed.'
'Brace and a ha-r-r-f!' drawls Slapp, in well-feigned disgust; 'brace and a ha-r-r-f!—why, it makes them ten brace, and six run to ground.'
'Oh, don't tell me,' retorts Frosty, with a shake of disgust; 'don't tell me. I knows better—I knows better. They'd only killed a brace since they began hunting up to yesterday. The rest were all cubs, poor things!—all cubs, poor things! Mr. Puffington's hounds are not the sort of animals to kill foxes: nasty, skirtin', flashy, jealous divils; always starin' about for holloas and assistance. I'll be d——d if I'd give eighteenpence for the 'ole lot on 'em.'
A loud guffaw from the Flat Hat men greeted this wholesale condemnation. The Puffington men looked unutterable things, and there is no saying what disagreeable comparisons might have been instituted (for the Puffingtonians mustered strong) had not his lordship and Jack cast up at the moment. Hats off and politeness was then the order of the day.
'Mornin',' said his lordship, with a snatch of his hat in return, as he pulled up and stared into the cloud-enveloped crowd; 'Mornin', Fyle; mornin', Fossick,' he continued, as he distinguished those worthies, as much by their hats as anything else. 'Where are the horses?' he said to Frostyface.
