"But your coats are the right colour, sir. And I shan't make it a bricklayers' job. Timber and asbestos sheeting. If possible—I should like you to give the Pelican two meets a season."
"I think we can manage that."
So Mr. Roland's brown and white stables went up with quite moderate dispatch, and in November the hounds met at the Pelican. Kit dragged Mr. Porteous away from the austere schoolroom where a paraffin oil stove made a stuffy heat and threw a pattern on the ceiling. They watched the waving tails of the hounds and the red coats of the whips move off to draw Bar Holt wood. Kit went with the foot-followers, and after scrambling over gates and plodding across muddy fields was lucky enough to see a fox with the pack in full cry. He returned some time in the dusk to find Mr. Porteous and to tell him about it, for Mr. Porteous' fat little legs had not carried him very far.
In December the Pelican was singled out again by Fortune, for Royalty came west for a gallop with the Winstonbury pack, and Royalty stabled two horses in the Pelican stables and slept in a Pelican bed. In fact it was the very bed which the Little Lady had made historic. And again, there were pictures of the Pelican in the daily papers, showing a coyly smiling young Prince in the act of raising his top-hat to the spectators.
Half of Stephen Sorrel's head and body appeared on one of these pictures, but his good fortune occupied the middle of the plate.
The Pelican's December average was 43. The winter proved an open one. A dozen or more hunting men and women came down regularly. Parents who arrived to visit their sons at Hadfield School began to develop the Pelican habit. Mr. Roland was planning a Christmas season, and Sorrell's tips were pouring regularly into the Winstonbury branch of the Midland Bank. The cashier was becoming conversational across the counter.
In January Sorrell had an interview with the manager. He was admitted into the manager's private room. The manager expressed himself as only toc ready to arrange the purchase of War Loan for him.
"A hundred pounds of 4½, 1925–45, Mr. Sorrell. The order shall go up at once to our brokers."
