Mr. Sawyer took the initiative by pointing to the fox’s tusk which fastened the string in his new friend’s hat.
“Done anything this last week?” said he, with that mysterious air specially affected by all individuals who are connected, however remotely, with horseflesh, and which, I believe, has much to answer for, in the impression of consummate roguery which it conveys to the uninitiated. “It’s been good scenting weather in my part of the world. Hounds must have run hard on the grass.”
The Honourable Crasher emitted a large volume of smoke, ere he roused himself for the effort, and replied: “Good thing, last Friday, with the Pytchley, from Fox Hall. Do you know that country?” he added, thinking, if his listener did _not_, he might save himself the trouble of detailing it.
“I am on my way down to hunt there now,” rejoined our friend, “so I take an interest, naturally, in your sport. Last Friday, you say? Ah! that was the day we had such a fine run over _our_ country. Two hours and forty-seven minutes, and killed our fox—_and killed our fox_,” he repeated, as if such a climax was sufficiently rare to merit more than common attention.
Nothing but the spirit of emulation between different packs could have embarked the Honourable Crasher on a long story; but he woke up from his lethargy at this juncture, and observed,
“Two hours and forty-seven minutes? Indeed! It must have been a fine run; but slow, I conclude—slow. I never care much for anything over an hour. It’s labour and sorrow, _walking_ after hounds, to _my_ mind.”
“Slow!” retorted Mr. Sawyer indignantly. “Not at all; I was riding the best horse in my stable, and he had to do all he knew to live with them. Fine country, too—wild fox-hunting country—not a soul in the fields; very deep, and a good deal of fencing. I don’t know that I was ever better carried,” he added meditatively, hoping to bring the conversation round to the merits of the grey.
But the Honourable Crasher had his story to tell too, and broke in with unusual vehemence:
“_Ours_ was about the quickest thing I ever rode to. Found in Faxton Corner; fox never hung a second, and the hounds ran him over those large grass-fields as if they were tied to him, all down by——Dear me, I forget the names of the places, and I never _can_ describe a run; but if you don’t know the country, it don’t signify. In short, they ran him all about, you know, over a capital line, and turned him up in the open, at the end of seven-and-twenty minutes, without a check, and very straight, you know, and all that; satisfactory to everybody, and not at all bad fun, and so on.” The Honourable C. was rapidly collapsing, running down like the last notes of a musical box. Ere he arrived at this very explicit conclusion, he had become perfectly torpid again.