CHAPTER X
THE FEELER
Bag fox-hunts, be they ever so good, are but unsatisfactory things; drag runs are, beyond all measure, unsatisfactory. After the best-managed bag fox-hunt, there is always a sort of suppressed joy, a deadly liveliness in the field. Those in the secret are afraid of praising it too much, lest the secret should ooze out, and strangers suppose that all their great runs are with bag foxes, while the mere retaking of an animal that one has had in hand before is not calculated to arouse any very pleasurable emotions. Nobody ever goes frantic at seeing an old donkey of a deer handed back into his carriage after a canter.
Our friends on this occasion soon exhausted what they had to say on the subject.
'That's a nice horse of yours,' observed Mr. Waffles to Mr. Sponge, as the latter, on the strength of the musty brush, now rode alongside the master of the hounds.
'I think he is,' replied Sponge, rubbing some of the now dried sweat from his shoulder and neck; 'I think he is; I like him a good deal better to-day than I did the first time I rode him.'
'What, he's a new one, is he?' asked Mr. Waffles, taking a scented cigar from his mouth, and giving a steady sidelong stare at the horse.
'Bought him in Leicestershire,' replied Sponge. 'He belonged to Lord Bullfrog, who didn't think him exactly up to his weight.'
'Up to his weight!' exclaimed Mr. Caingey Thornton, who had now ridden up on the other side of his great patron, 'why, he must be another Daniel Lambert.'