But perhaps we have dwelt too long on the seamy side of the duties of a mistress of hounds. Let us turn to the more agreeable contemplation of her pleasures.
Should she belong to a hunting family, she will have heard from her father, ever since she can remember, stories of the "brave days of old," of Meynell, and Musters, and the giants of those days. She will have learnt to sing "Osbaldeston's voice, reaching the heavens, boys," to repeat the "Billesdon Coplow" and "Ranksborough Gorse," and in the intervals of schoolroom lessons she will have been taken to see packs now, perhaps, become historical.
If a dweller in the North Country, the name of Ralph Lambton will be familiar to her; and in the South, legends of John Ward and Mr Farquharson of Badminton, and Berkeley, have been the delight of her youth.
Should she be fortunate enough to live in "the Shires" she may, from an early age, have looked up at the towers of Belvoir, where hunting and hospitality are a byword and a delight, and she may just remember the glories of Quorn, and Sir Richard, of Lord Henry, and the Burton, like Mr Bromley Davenport,
"Nourishing a verdant youth,
With the fairy tales of gallops, ancient runs devoid of truth."
The kind cheery voices of Captain Percy Williams and Mr Anstruther Thomson, always indulgent and encouraging to young people, may have fostered her natural love of the chase, and she may, while hunting with the former, have imbibed some idea of riding, from the sight of the celebrated Dick Christian handling the young horses at Rufford.
She will have looked with a reverential awe at blind Mr Foljambe of Osberton, who was able to judge of any hound by the sense of touch, long after that of sight was denied him, and who still hunted led by a groom.
Perhaps a little private hunting with beagles, or foxhound puppies, may have given our future mistress an interest in individual hounds, their treatment and characteristics, so that by-and-by, when she has to do with things on a larger scale, it is easier for her to know one hound from another, and to appreciate their differences, than if she had never seen less than seventeen or eighteen couple together.
Very likely it may have been her dream from childhood to marry a Master of Hounds, so when, as the old song says,—