The Earl again trotted gently on, raising his hat most deferentially as he came along side of her, as usual, unaverted head.
“Good morning, my Lord!” exclaimed she gaily, as if agreeably surprised, tendering for the first time her pretty, little, primrose-coloured kid-gloved hand, looking as though she would condescend to notice a “mere fox-hunter.”
The gay old gentleman pressed it with becoming fervour, thinking he never saw her looking so well before.
They then struck up a light rapid conversation.
Miss perhaps never did look brighter or more radiant, and as his lordship rode by her side, he really thought if he could make up his mind to surrender his freedom to any woman, it would be to her. There was a something about her that he could not describe, but still a something that was essentially different to all his other flames.
He never could bear a riding-woman before, but now he felt quite proud to have such an elegant, piquant attendant on his pack.—Should like, at all events, to keep her in the country, and enjoy her society.—Would like to add her to the collection of Featherbedfordshire witches of which his friends joked him in town.—“Might have done worse than marry Imperial John,” thought his lordship. John mightn’t be quite her match in point of manner, but she would soon have polished him up, and John must be doing uncommonly well as times go—cattle and corn both selling prodigiously high, and John with his farm at a very low rent. And the thought of John and his beef brought our friend Billy to the Earl’s mind, and after a sort of random compliment between Miss de Glancey and her horse, he exclaimed, “By the way! I’ve got a young friend out I wish to introduce to you,” so rising in his saddle and looking back into the crowd he hallooed out, “Pringle!” a name that was instantly caught up by the quick-eared Dicky, a “Mister” tacked to it and passed backward to Speed, who gave it to a groom; and Billy was presently seen boring his way through the opening crowd, just as a shepherd’s dog bores its way through a flock of sheep.
“Pringle,” said his lordship, as the approach of Billy’s horse caused Valiant to lay back his ears, “Pringle! I want to introduce you to Miss de Glancey, Miss de Glancey give me leave to introduce my friend Mr. Pringle,” continued he, adding soto voce, as if for Miss de Glancey’s ear alone, “young man of very good family and fortune—richest Commoner, in England, they say.” But before his lordship got to the richest Commoner part of his speech, a dark frown of displeasure had overcast the sweet smile of those usually tranquil features, which luckily, however, was not seen by Billy; and before he got his cap restored to his head after a sky scraping salute, Miss de Glancey had resumed her wonted complacency—inwardly resolving to extinguish the “richest Commoner,” just as she had done his lordship’s other “friend Mr. Hybrid.” Discarding the Earl, therefore, she now opened a most voluble battering on our good-looking Billy who, to do him justice, maintained his part so well, that a lady with less ambitious views might have been very well satisfied to be Mrs. Pringle. Indeed, when his lordship looked at the two chattering and ogling and simpering together, and thought of that abominable old Binks and the drag, and the letter from the Boodleite, his heart rather smote him for what he had done; for young and fresh as he then felt himself, he knew that age would infallibly creep upon him at last, just as he saw it creeping upon each particular friend when he went to town, and he questioned that he should ever find any lady so eminently qualified to do the double duty of gracing his coronet and disappointing the General. Not but that the same thought had obtruded itself with regard to other ladies; but he now saw that he had been mistaken with respect to all of them, and that this was the real, genuine, no mistake, “right one.” Moreover, Miss de Glancey was the only lady who according to his idea had not made up to him—rather snubbed him in fact. Mistaken nobleman! There are, many ways of making up to a man. But as with many, so with his lordship, the last run was always the finest, and the last lady always the fairest—the most engaging. With distracting considerations such as these, and the advantage of seeing Miss de Glancey play the artillery of her arts upon our young friend, they reached the large old pasture on the high side of Quarrington Gorse, a cover of some four acres in extent, lying along a gently sloping bank, with cross rides cut down to the brook. Mr. Boggledike pulled up near the rubbing-post in the centre of the field, to give his hounds a roll, while the second-horse gentlemen got their nags, and the new comers exchanged their hacks for their hunters. Judging by the shaking of hands, the exclamations of “halloo! old boy is that you?”
“I say! where are you from?” and similar inquiries, there were a good many of the latter—some who never went to the Castle, some who thought it too far, some who thought it poor fun. Altogether, when the field got scattered over the pasture, as a shop-keeper scatters his change on the counter, or as an old stage coachman used to scatter his passengers on the road with an upset, there might be fifty or sixty horsemen, assmen, and gigmen.
Most conspicuous was his lordship’s old eye-sore, Hicks, the flying hatter of Hinton (Sir Moses Mainchance’s “best man”), who seemed to think it incumbent upon him to kill his lordship a hound every year by his reckless riding, and who now came out in mufti, a hunting-cap, a Napoleon-grey tweed jacket, loose white cords, with tight drab leggings, and spurs on his shoes, as if his lordship’s hounds were not worth the green cut-a-way and brown boots he sported with Sir Moses. He now gave his cap-peak a sort of rude rap with his fore-finger, as his lordship came up, as much as to say, “I don’t know whether I’ll speak to you or not,” and then ran his great raking chestnut into the crowd to get at his old opponent Gameboy Green, who generally rode for the credit of the Tantivy hunt. As these sort of cattle always hunt in couples, Hicks is followed by his shadow, Tom Snowdon, the draper—or the Damper, as he is generally called, from his unhappy propensity of taking a gloomy view of everything.
To the right are a knot of half-horse, half-pony mounted Squireen-looking gentlemen, with clay pipes in their mouths, whose myrtle-green coats, baggy cords, and ill-cleaned tops, denote as belonging to the Major’s “haryers.” And mark how the little, pompons man wheels before them, in order that Pringle may see the reverence they pay to his red coat. He raises his punt hat with all the dignity of the immortal Simpson of Vauxhall memory, and passes on in search of further compliments.
His lordship has now settled himself into the “Wilkinson and Kidd” of Rob Roy, a bay horse of equal beauty with Valiant, but better adapted to the country into which they are now going, Imperial John has drawn his girths with his teeth, D’Orsay Davis has let down his hat-string, Mr. John Easylease has tightened his curb, Mr. Section drawn on his gloves, the Damper finished his cigar, and all things are approximating a start.
“Elope, lads! Elope!” cries Dicky Boggledike to his hounds, whistling and waving them together, and in an instant the rollers and wide-spreaders are frolicking and chiding under his horse’s nose. “G-e-e-ntly, lads! g-e-ently!” adds he, looking the more boisterous ones reprovingly in the face—“gently lads, gently,” repeats he, “or you’ll be rousin’ the gem’lman i’ the gos.” This movement of Dicky and the hounds has the effect of concentrating the field, all except our fair friend and Billy, who are still in the full cry of conversation, Miss putting forth her best allurements the sooner to bring Billy to book.
At a chuck of his lordship’s chin, Dicky turns his horse towards the gorse, just as Billy, in reply to Miss de Glancey’s question, if he is fond of hunting, declares, as many a youth has done who hates it, that he “doats upon it!”
A whistle, a waive, and a cheer, and the hounds are away. They charge the hedge with a crash, and drive into the gorse as if each hound had a bet that he would find the fox himself.
Mr. Boggledike being now free of his pack, avails himself of this moment of ease, to exhibit his neat, newly clad person of which he is not a little proud, by riding along the pedestrian-lined hedge, and requesting that “you fut people,” as he calls them, “will have the goodness not to ‘alloa, but to ‘old up your ‘ats if you view