Where I should have ended it is impossible to say; but here our tête-à-tête was interrupted by the advent of the Major, who heard the tag end of my panegyric with manifest delight.
"Huntingcrop is the place for you, Mr Smoothley," said he, with enthusiasm, "and I shall be more than pleased to see you there. I think, too, we shall be able to show you some of your favourite sport this season. We meet four days a week, and you may reckon on at least one day with the Grassmere. It is always a sincere pleasure to me to find a young fellow whose heart is in it."
As regards my heart, it was in my boots at the prospect; and, despite the great temptation of Laura's presence, I paused, carefully to consider the pros and cons before accepting.
How pleasant to see her fresh face every morning at the breakfast-table—how unpleasant to see a horse—most likely painfully fresh also—waiting to bear me on a fearsome journey as soon as the meal was concluded! How delightful to feel the soft pressure of her fingers as she gave me morning greeting: how awful to feel my own fingers numbed and stiff with tugging at the bridle of a wild, tearing, unmanageable steed! How enjoyable to—
"Are you engaged for Christmas, Mr Smoothley?" Laura inquired, and that query settled me. It might freeze—I could sprain my ankle, or knock up an excuse of some sort. Yes, I would go; and might good luck go with me.
For the next few days I unceasingly studied the works of Major Whyte-Melville, and others who have most to say on what they term sport, and endeavoured to get up a little enthusiasm. I did get up a little—very little; but when the desired quality had made its appearance, attracted by my authors' wizard-like power, it was of an extremely spurious character, and entirely evaporated when I arrived at the little railway station nearest to the Hall. A particularly neat groom, whom I recognised as having been in town with the Huntingcrops, was awaiting me in a dogcart, and the conveyance was just starting when we met a string of horses, hooded and sheeted, passing along the road: in training, if I might be permitted to judge from their actions, for the wildest scenes in "Mazeppa," "Dick Turpin," or some other exciting equestrian drama. I did not want the man to tell me that they were his master's: I knew it at once; and the answers he made to my questions as to their usual demeanour in the field plunged me into an abyss of despair.
"I unceasingly studied the works of Major Whyte-Melville, and endeavoured to get up a little enthusiasm."—Page 271.
The hearty welcome of the Major, the more subdued but equally inspiriting greeting of his daughter, and the contagious cheerfulness of a house full of pleasant people, in some measure restored me; but it was not until the soothing influence of dinner had taken possession of my bosom, and a whisper had run through the establishment that it was beginning to freeze, that I thoroughly recovered my equanimity, and was able to retire to rest with some small hope that my bed next night would not be one of pain and suffering.
Alas for my anticipations! I was awakened from slumber by a knock at the door, and the man entered my room with a can of hot water in one hand and a pair of tops in the other; while over his arm were slung my—in point of fact, my breeches; a costume which I had never worn except on the day it came home, when I spent the greater portion of the evening sportingly arrayed astride of a chair, to see how it all felt.