Rorie felt all his most generous impulses turned to a sense of constraint and bitterness. He could say no more.
"Will you give me a list of the people you would like to be asked?" said his mother, after rather an uncomfortable silence.
"I'll go and talk it over with the Duke," answered Rorie. "He'll enter into the spirit of the thing."
Rorie found the Duke going the round of the loose-boxes, and uncle and nephew spent an hour together pleasantly, overhauling the fine stud of hunters which the Duke kept at Ashbourne, and going round the paddocks to look at the brood-mares and their foals; these latter being eccentric little animals, all head and legs, which nestled close to the mother's side for a minute, and then took fright at their own tails, and shot off across the field, like a skyrocket travelling horizontally, or suddenly stood up on end, and executed a wild waltz in mid air.
The Duke and Roderick decided which among these leggy little beasts possessed the elements of future excellence; and after an hour's perambulation of the paddocks they went to the house, where they found the Duchess and Lady Mabel in the morning-room; the Duchess busy making scarlet cloth cloaks for her school-children, Lady Mabel reading a German critic on Shakespeare.
Here the hunt breakfast was fully discussed. Everybody was to be asked. The Duchess put in a plea for her school-children. It would be such a treat for the little things to see the hounds, and their red cloaks and hoods would look so pretty on the lawn.
"Let them come, by all means," said Roderick; "your school--half-a-dozen schools. I'll have three or four tents rigged up for refreshments. There shall be plenty to eat and drink for everybody. And now I'm off to the Tempests' to arrange about the hounds. The Squire will be pleased, I know."
"Of course," said Lady Mabel, "and the Squire's daughter."
"Dear little thing!" exclaimed Rorie, with an elder brother's tenderness; "she'll be as pleased as Punch. You'll hunt, of course, Mabel?"
"I don't know. I don't shine in the field, as Miss Tempest does."
"Oh, but you must come, Mab. The Duke will find you a safe mount."
"She has a hunter I bred on purpose for her," said the Duke; "but she'll never be such a horsewoman as her mother."