At the joyous, well-known “here they come!” of the lookers out, a move is perceptible among the field, who forthwith set off to meet the hounds, and as the advancing parties near, the Major has time to identify and appropriate their faces and their persons. First comes Captain Nabley, the chief constable of Featherbeds, who greets our master with the friendliness of a brother soldier, “one of us” in arms, and is forthwith introduced to our Billy. Next is fat farmer Nettlefold, who considers himself entitled to a shake of the hand in return for the Major’s frequent comings over his farm at Carol-hill green, which compliment being duly paid the great master then raises his hat in return for the salutes of Faulder, Rennison, and Trail, and again stops to shake hands with an aged well-whiskered dandy in mufty, one Mr. Wotherspoon, now farming or starving a little property he purchased with his butlerage savings under the great Duke of Thunderdownshire. Wotherspoon apes the manners of high life with the brandified face of low, talks parliament, and takes snuff from a gold box with a George-the-Fourthian air. He now offers the Major a pinch, who accepts it with graceful concession.
The seedy-looking gentleman in black, on the too palpable three and sixpence a sider, is Mr. Catoheside, the County Court bailiff, with his pocket full of summonses, who thinks to throw a round with the Major into the day’s hire of his broken-knee’d chestnut, and the greasy-haired, shining-faced youth with him, on the longtailed white pony, is Ramshaw, the butcher’s boy, on the same sort of speculation. Then we have Mr. Meggison’s coachman availing himself of his master’s absence to give the family horse a turn with the hounds instead of going to coals, as he ought; and Mr. Dotherington’s young man halting on his way to the doctor’s with a note. He will tell his mistress the doctor was out and he had to wait ever so long till he came home. The four truants seem to herd together on the birds-of-a-feather principle. And now the reinforced party reach the meet below the grey ivy-tangled rocks, and Solomon pulls up at the accustomed spot to give his hounds a roll, and let the Major receive the encomiums of the encircling field. Then there is a repetition of the kennel scene: “Lovely! Lovely! Lovely!—beautiful bitch that—Chaunter. Chaunter! Chaunter!—there’s a handsome hound—Bustler, good dog!” Only each man has his particular favourite or hound that he has either bred or walked, or knows the name of, and so most of the pack come in for more or less praise. It is agreed on all hands that they never looked better, or the establishment more complete. “Couldn’t be better if it had cost five thousand a-year!”