'And broke out into cold sweats,' said the gentleman.
'Exactly,' said the lady, not quite liking it, but still enduring with patience.
'Rather groggy on his pins the next morning? suggested her friend.
'Very groggy,' said Harriet, regarding the word as one belonging to fair sporting phraseology.
'And inclined to go very much on the points of his toes. I know all about it, Miss Tristram, as well as though I'd seen him.'
'There's nothing but rest for it, I suppose.'
'Rest and regular exercise—that's the chief thing; and I should give him a mash as often as three times a week. He'll be all right again in three or four weeks, —that is if he's sound, you know.'
'Oh, as sound as a bell,' said Miss Tristram.
'He'll never be the same horse on a road though,' said the sporting gentlemen, shaking his head and whispering to Staveley.
And now the time had come at which they were to move. They always met at eleven; and at ten minutes past, to the moment, Jacob the huntsman would summons the old hounds from off their haunches, '1 believe we may be moving, Jacob,' said Mr. Williams, the master.
'The time be up,' said Jacob, looking at a ponderous timekeeper that might with truth be called a hunting-watch; and then they all moved slowly away back from the Grange, down a farm-road which led to Monkton Wood, distant from the old house perhaps a quarter of a mile.
'May we go as far as the wood?' said Miss Furnival to Augustus. 'Without being made to ride over hedges, I mean.'
'Oh, dear, yes; and ride about the wood half the day. It will be an hour and a half before a fox will break—even if he ever breaks.'
'Dear me! how tired you will be of us. Now do say something pretty, Mr. Staveley.'
'It's not my métier. We shall be tired, not of you, but of the thing. Galloping up and down the same cuts in the wood for an hour and a half is not exciting; nor does it improve the matter much if we stand still, as one should do by rights.'
'That would be very slow.'
'You need not be afraid. They never do here, Everybody will be rushing about as though the very world depended on their galloping.'
'I'm so glad; that's just what I like.'
'Everybody except Lord Alston, Miss Tristram, and the other old stagers. They will husband their horses, and come out as fresh at two o'clock as though they were only just out. There is nothing so valuable as experience in hunting.'
